NVIDIA Pascal GPU variants begin testing phase; reportedly 10X faster than Maxwell CPUs

The next-gen NVIDIA Pascal GPUs are expected to be 10x faster than the current Maxwell GPUs.blogs.nvidia.com

The brand new NVIDIA Pascal Graphics Cards are almost on their way to the public, according to reports, which say that four different versions of the upcoming GPU are already undergoing the testing and validation phase.

According to the reports, four versions of the next-generation Pascal-based graphics cards were already sent to NVIDIA's testing facilities in India from the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company facilities in Taiwan. These versions all come with a "699" serial number, which was first spotted in December 2015.

The actual serial numbers of the upcoming GPUS that are currently under the testing and validation phase include:

  • 699-2H403-0201-500
  • 699-1G411-0000-000
  • 699-1H400-0000-100
  • 699-12914-0071-100

A previous report from WCCFTech pointed out that the 2H403, 1G411, and 1H400 versions appeared to be derivatives of a similar basic board, which could possibly come with different specs upon release. Meanwhile, the 12914 version came from an entirely different board.

However, all the upcoming GPUs from NVIDIA will come with the same per unit values. But the GP100 GPU is believed to be the biggest and most powerful among all the Pascal GPUs from the company.

Some of the features of the GP100 include:

  • Pascal graphics architecture
  • DirectX 12 feature level 12_1 or higher
  • Four 4-Hi HBM2 stacks, with a total of 16 GB of VRAM and 8-Hi stacks for up to 32 GB that can be used for professional compute SKUs
  • 4096-bit memory bus interface
  • Around 17 billion transistors, which are reportedly double the number that can be found in the GM200
  • Built using the 16nm FinFET manufacturing process from TSMC
  • NVLink

The GPUs are reportedly 10 times faster than the Maxwell CPUs. It was also previously reported to be released in the second half of 2016.

While NVIDIA is currently mum about the actual details and official release date of the upcoming next-gen GPUs, the company is expected provide more details during their GPU Technology Conference, which is slated to happen in April this year.