GK104: nVidia's Kepler to be the First Mining Card?

[tacotime]

GK104 will have 1536 stream processors clocked at 1GHz.

Here's my totally speculative math:

A GTX 570 with 480 SP at 732MHz gets about 150 MH/s, or 0.3125 MH s^-1 SP^-1.

Scaling linearly with clock speed, we would expect 0.4269 MH s^-1 SP^-1 at 1GHz.

For 1536 SPs, that's 656 MH/s at an estimated TDP of 200w.

Of course, it's likely that these new SPs will be a little slower than the old ones, but even if they're 30% slower they should still be competitive with AMD cards.

[MrTeal]

GK104 will have 1536 stream processors clocked at 1GHz.

Here's my totally speculative math:

A GTX 570 with 480 SP at 732MHz gets about 150 MH/s, or 0.3125 MH s^-1 SP^-1.

Scaling linearly with clock speed, we would expect 0.4269 MH s^-1 SP^-1 at 1GHz.

For 1536 SPs, that's 656 MH/s at an estimated TDP of 200w.

Of course, it's likely that these new SPs will be a little slower than the old ones, but even if they're 30% slower they should still be competitive with AMD cards.

It doesn't appear that hotclocks have survived the transition to Kepler though, so while the shaders in a GTX570 actually run at 1464MHz the shaders in the GTX680 will run at 1000MHz.

The CUDA cores in Kepler appear to be completely different than Fermi. I don't think we'll have a good idea how they perform until they're released and miners get optimized for them.

[The-Real-Link]

Still really curious to see how it'll perform though.  Thanks for giving us an idea (hopefully).

[jjiimm_64]

my guess is it will be as good as a 6950.  dont they have about 1536?

[Jaryu]

my guess is it will be as good as a 6950.  dont they have about 1536?

then it won't be good at all, not much to compare when one costs 210 and the other 550 both brand new.

So unless nvidia added something in the hardware so it can do the proper bitcoin hash math in 1/5 or better than the time of current cards from the 6000 series, the card it will be totally useless for mining.

[Gabi]

You can't compare ati and nvidia SP, they are different

Also i suppose kepler SP will be different from older nvidia cards. So again, comparing 570 with kepler seems pointless to me.

[jake262144]

GK104 will have 1536 stream processors clocked at 1GHz.
Here's my totally speculative math:

A GTX 570 with 480 SP at 732MHz gets about 150 MH/s, or 0.3125 MH s^-1 SP^-1.
...

Wrong, shaders in a GTX570 run at twice the core clock. Fermi^WKepler will be running them at core clock, like AMD cards do.
This subject was already discussed. Mining performance will almost certainly suck compared to AMD cards.

[Jaryu]

GK104 will have 1536 stream processors clocked at 1GHz.
Here's my totally speculative math:

A GTX 570 with 480 SP at 732MHz gets about 150 MH/s, or 0.3125 MH s^-1 SP^-1.
...

Wrong, shaders in a GTX570 run at twice the core clock. Fermi will be running them at core clock, like AMD cards do.
This subject was already discussed. Mining performance will almost certainly suck compared to AMD cards.

We'll know the answer soon enough... they are releasing the GTX680 next thursday or friday, so by the weekend the internet will have something either good or not.

[tacotime]

Wrong, shaders in a GTX570 run at twice the core clock. Fermi will be running them at core clock, like AMD cards do.
This subject was already discussed. Mining performance will almost certainly suck compared to AMD cards.

Even if the SPs are running at 70% the frequency of the Fermi cards, that would still mean they would be capable of 460MH/s.

With a TDP of 200w, that's 2.3MH/w/s, which is better than a 6970.  The card also has a 1050MHz turbo hot clock.

There's also supposed to be an extra ALU per SP in Kepler as well, not sure if it's just another Vec4 ALU though

[bulanula]

I don't know about you guys but last time I heard, hotclocks are kept in Kepler so the GTX 680 still might turn out to be a BTC mining monster.

Ready to sell all the red ATI stuff I have. Boycotting them if Nvidia turns up with something competitive. Linux drivers suck too much. No need for xserver and no stupid 8 GPU limit = Nvidia FTW. Just hoping that Kepler does integer math right and not only FP like before for weather forecasting, folding etc.

[Gabi]

I'm ready to boycott nvidia even more

[bulanula]

I'm ready to boycott nvidia even more

LOL. Nvidia has no mining card until now and you are boycotting it already

Anyway, maybe someone more technically inclined ( ArtForz we are looking at you ) can tell us if there is some hope or not.

Pretty detailed information here that appears to be 90% true and the final GTX 680 technical details :

http://wccftech.com/kepler-gk104-block-diagram-detailed-nvidia-intro-txaa-antialiasing-adaptive-vsync-3d-vision-surround/

Let us know !

[jake262144]

Anyway, maybe someone more technically inclined ( ArtForz we are looking at you ) can tell us if there is some hope or not.

I think you want one particular answer, not just any answer.
I see no reason whatsoever why one should expect significant progress in integer ops performance - those have long been off nVidia's radar.
There are twice as many stream processors working at a lower clock than previous generation cards.
We're not getting rid of buggy AMD drivers and the need for running Xorg any time soon 

[Vbs]

GK104 will have 1536 stream processors clocked at 1GHz.

Here's my totally speculative math:

A GTX 570 with 480 SP at 732MHz gets about 150 MH/s, or 0.3125 MH s^-1 SP^-1.

Scaling linearly with clock speed, we would expect 0.4269 MH s^-1 SP^-1 at 1GHz.

For 1536 SPs, that's 656 MH/s at an estimated TDP of 200w.

Of course, it's likely that these new SPs will be a little slower than the old ones, but even if they're 30% slower they should still be competitive with AMD cards.

The stream processors ("cuda cores") are dynamically clocked, and can go to 1411MHz (non-oc'ed).
http://www.overclock.net/t/1231113/gigabyte-gtx-680-2gb-already-arrive-at-my-shop

Also, you should be using hot-clocks in your calcs, e.g.:

GTX 570, 480SP at 1464MHz (2*732MHz) shaders ~150MH/s, so (1411*1536)/(1464*480) = 3.084*150MH/s = 463MH/s

The thing is... they've changed the architecture from Fermi, so untill someone tests it with real hardware, it's all a gamble.
http://www.techpowerup.com/162500/GK104-Block-Diagram-Explained.html
nVidia presentation slides: https://imgur.com/a/aQmuA

[bulanula]

GK104 will have 1536 stream processors clocked at 1GHz.

Here's my totally speculative math:

A GTX 570 with 480 SP at 732MHz gets about 150 MH/s, or 0.3125 MH s^-1 SP^-1.

Scaling linearly with clock speed, we would expect 0.4269 MH s^-1 SP^-1 at 1GHz.

For 1536 SPs, that's 656 MH/s at an estimated TDP of 200w.

Of course, it's likely that these new SPs will be a little slower than the old ones, but even if they're 30% slower they should still be competitive with AMD cards.

The stream processors ("cuda cores") are dynamically clocked, and can go to 1411MHz (non-oc'ed).
http://www.overclock.net/t/1231113/gigabyte-gtx-680-2gb-already-arrive-at-my-shop

Also, you should be using hot-clocks in your calcs, e.g.:

GTX 570, 480SP at 1464MHz (2*732MHz) shaders ~150MH/s, so (1411*1536)/(1464*480) = 3.084*150MH/s = 463MH/s

The thing is... they've changed the architecture from Fermi, so untill someone tests it with real hardware, it's all a gamble.
http://www.techpowerup.com/162500/GK104-Block-Diagram-Explained.html
nVidia presentation slides: https://imgur.com/a/aQmuA

So going by above link it looks like card is already here.

Anyone going to buy one and do some BTC mining ?

Maybe a new kernel needs to be developed to pwn the 7970 at mining ?

[Vbs]

For best performance you need a miner that supports CUDA (OpenCL is forever "atm" slower than CUDA on nVidia hardware ).

Two that I know of:
Ufasoft: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3486.0
RPC Miner CUDA: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2444.0

[st4rdust]

No way of knowing until the card is actually released, but OP did a solid bit of educated estimation.

Also, why are they calling their card Kepler? It sounds to me like some not-very-subtle reference to the behavior of planetary orbits. Is this supposed to be some kind of nVidia/NASA joint project? Some kind of space calculation capabilities? Hmm? Some kind of crazy orbital mechanics logic built into the GPU? Maybe leaving amateur astronomers richer for the experience? That right, nVidia? Hmm???

No, but seriously, sounds like an awful idea for a video card.

[ShadesOfMarble]

Last GPU was Fermi, now we have Kepler, then Maxwell. What do these names have in common? All three were great physicists...

[st4rdust]

Last GPU was Fermi, now we have Kepler, then Maxwell. What do these names have in common? All three were great physicists...

That makes much more sense. I'm not familiar with the current nVidia line but now I kinda wish I was, so I could have saved myself the embarrassment of my previous rant about the name of the card.

Oops.

[tacotime]

nda is up and reviews are out. The 680 is shredding the 7970 in most applications... Can't wait to see the mining performance.

http://overclock.net/t/1231711/toms-geforce-gtx-680-review