Behold, the new NVIDIA graphics card has just been pictured. Thanks to Cloudfire, our dedicated contributor, we might be looking at the first pictures of the second generation Maxwell engineering sample.
A Chinese website called GamerSky has just posted what seems to be a GeForce GTX 880 engineering sample. Of course, we don’t know that for sure, but GamerSky crew titled their post exactly with such codename. We also have the picture of the GPU itself, and judging from the markings (1421A1), it was manufactured somewhere in the 21st week of this year.
The prototype is equipped with an amazing capacity of 8 GB frame buffer (sixteen SKHynix H5GQ4H24MFR 0.5GB modules [hynix]). Such amount of memory capacity was possible thanks to the usage of dual-sided modules. This particular Hynix memory runs at 7 GHz. We believe that GTX 880 will launch with 4GB memory, later to be accompanied by 8GB models. Either way, this is a major improvement over GTX 780’s 3GB.
The other interesting bit, is that the sample is equipped with 3 power connectors (6+6+8pin). It is nothing we were expecting from power efficient Maxwell architecture, but it could be just a feature for engineering sample. Either way, the absolute maximum power draw should not exceed 375W (75+75+75+150).
We can still see SLI fingers on the top, which indicates that NVIDIA has not decided to follow AMD’s path with XDMA CrossFire. The oldschool SLI connectors might still be required.
I’m not exactly sure what is hidden behind pixelated power section. All we can see are two rather large components group. Are there any ARM cores hidden there?
Last but not least, guys over at GamerSky are saying that the sample is featuring GM210 GPU, the big daddy of GM204, which is not expected to launch sooner than Q2 2015. Does it mean GTX 880 is equipped with GM210 or was is just a unfortunate prediction? We should know for sure in few months. We believe this is actually GM204.
UPDATE: We now have a confirmation from ComputerBase that this is in fact GM204 GPU.
One more thing in case you’re wondering: final PCB revision will not be green, almost every GeForce engineering sample has a green circuit board.
Side-by-side comparison of GM2xx, GK110, GK104 and GM107. It is smaller than GK110, but the die size has definitely increased compared to GK104.
