If you recall, Nvidia(NVDA) is claiming that their ‘new’ 500 series cards are new GPUs, but anyone testing the parts knows that they are mere bug fixes. The company has seen fit to no longer release die sizes, so SemiAccurate has picked up the slack with a bit of investigation.
If you recall, the GF110 is a hair bigger than the GF100, not surprising given the area they likely had to trade to get power consumption back to merely unacceptable levels. There was more effort put in to selling the curious power ratings than there was actual engineering, but since Nvidia still blames TSMC for it’s own design incompetence, this is hardly shocking.
The GF114, aka GF104b, had quite a bit less time to bake than the GF110, and Nvidia had already learned from the mistakes of the bigger chip. This meant the changes that led the GTX460 to be upgraded to the GTX560 were minor. This is actually reflected in the resulting chip size.
Experts interviewed by SemiAccurate say that the two dies are almost exactly the same, with only the most minor bits cleaned up here and there. The crossbar on this one didn’t need reworking like the GF100, so they were expecting basically the same die. They weren’t disappointed.
That said, the GF104/GTX460/GTX480M weighs in at 365mm^2, between AMD’s Cypress and Cayman in size. The die itself very asymmetrical at 24.9mm * 14.6mm, something readily apparent from the chip package itself. The new GF114 measures out at 24.7mm * 14.5mm for a total of 358mm^2, or 98% of the older chip’s size.
So much for the ‘all new’ screed. Can’t say we didn’t warn you.S|A
Charlie Demerjian
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