From PC World: Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang loves a spectacle. So while you’re reading this sentence, the GPU-manufacturer’s founder is regaling thousands of gamers at a 24-hour gaming event the company is sponsoring in Los Angeles with the announcement of Nvidia’s latest graphics processor, code-named “Big Maxwell.”
Despite Nvidia’s draconian efforts to prevent a recurrence of the leaks that presaged the announcement of its Shield Tablet, details of the new GPUs have been dripping into the Interwebs for several weeks. Here’s the official information: The new GPU will initially be available in two SKUs, the $329 GeForce GTX 970 and the $549 GeForce GTX 980. The GTX 970 has 1664 processor cores running at a base frequency of 1050MHz (boost clock of 1178MHz), while the beefier GTX 980 has 2048 cores running at 1126MHz (boost clock of 1216MHz). The GTX 970 and the GTX 980 both have a 256-bit interface to 4GB of GDDR5 memory running at an effective speed of 7Gbps.
The mounting brackets on cards following Nvidia’s reference design will have three dual-link DVI connectors, one DisplayPort 1.2 interface, and one HDMI 2.0 port. HDMI 2.0 support is particularly important because it supports 4K resolution at a refresh rate of 60Hz (the older HDMI 1.4b standard is limited to a refresh rate of just 30Hz, which is fine for movies, but terrible for games).
View: Article @ Source Site
