NVIDIA’s Annual GPU Rebadge Begins: GeForce GT 730M and GeForce 710M Partial Specs Published
by Ryan Smith on January 8, 2013 2:00 PM ESTAs we discussed yesterday with AMD’s latest round of GPU rebadges, both AMD and NVIDIA are locked into playing the OEM rebadge game in order to fulfill their OEM partner’s calendar driven schedules. OEMs want to do yearly updates (regardless of where the technical product cycle really is), so when the calendar doesn’t line up with the technology this is achieved through rebadges of existing products. In turn these OEMs put pressure on component suppliers to rebadge too, so that when consumers compare the specs of this year’s “new” model to last year’s model the former look newer. The end result is that both AMD and NVIDIA need to play this game or find themselves locked out of the OEM market.
In any case, the bulk of these rebadges coincide with CES, which is where the OEMs announce their calendar-refresh products. We often see the specs for these systems leak out a couple of months in advance – and accordingly see the product numbers for the rebadged components they contain – but it’s not until CES that AMD and NVIDIA publish the specs of these products. So we’ve known these products were coming, we just haven’t had any solid details about them until now.
Jumping right into things, this morning NVIDIA updated their GeForce product page with a link to a PDF with the specifications for two new mobile products: GeForce GT 730M and GeForce 710M. NVIDIA’s PDF doesn’t go into great detail – in particular they aren’t listing the clockspeeds at this time – but from the specs provided we can divine some more information about these first members of the 700M family.
| NVIDIA GeForce 700M Series GPU Specification Comparison | ||||
| NVIDIA GeForce GT 730M | NVIDIA GeForce 710M | |||
| Was | 640M? | 620M? | ||
| Stream Processors | 384? | 96? | ||
| Texture Units | 32? | 16? | ||
| ROPs | 16? | 4? | ||
| Core Clock | ? | ? | ||
| Boost Clock | ? | ? | ||
| Memory Clock | ? GDDR5 / DDR3 | ? DDR3 | ||
| Memory Bus Width | 128-bit? | 128-bit? | ||
| VRAM | ? | ? | ||
| Transistor Count | 1.17B | 585M | ||
| GPU | GK107 | GF117 | ||
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | ||
| Architecture | Kepler | Fermi | ||
For the time being we have a few unknowns and a few assumptions on our parts, but based on NVIDIA’s specs and naming scheme we are very confident about which GPUs are actually behind these products. The 730M is some kind of GK107 rebadge – almost certainly 640M – as evidenced by its support for Kepler family features such as TXAA, PCIe 3.0, and DisplayPort 1.2. We beiieve this to be 640M in particular based on the use of both GDDR5 and DDR3 and the product name, though a 650M rebadge is also a possibility due to the very similar features of those parts.
The other part on NVIDIA’s current 700M series list is the GeForce 710M. This we believe to be a GF117 rebadge – almost certainly 620M – as evidenced by its lack of support for Kepler family features such as PCIe 3.0, TXAA, or support for resolutions over 2560x1600. This means that yes, just like the 600M series, the 700M series will contain some last-generation Fermi parts too, so any hope of a unified mobile family have been dashed by this product. Like the 620M this is a DDR3-only part, and exists as NVIDIA’s entry-level part over Intel’s iGPUs.
It’s interesting to note that in lieu of clockspeeds (or really any other hard details) NVIDIA is listing something called the “GeForce Performance Score”, which is defined as the performance of the part relative to Intel’s HD4000 iGPU. The 730M and 710M are 4.8x and 3.0x respectively, and while NVIDIA is almost certainly being overgenerous in their performance estimations here, it does lend further proof to these being GK107 and GF117 rebadges.
Finally, although NVIDIA has only published information on the 730M and 710M so far, based on previous experience we believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg. In the coming weeks (if not days) we would expect to see more mobile rebadges, along with some kind of desktop rebadge. We’ll keep our eyes peeled, so until they stay tuned.
Source: NVIDIA GeForce Product Page
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r3loaded - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
As long as they keep this rebadging nonsense away from the retail sectors, I'm not bothered too much by it.Why do OEMs insist on this nonsense in the first place? Perhaps AMD and Nvidia should form a pact to refrain from this and not give in to the OEM's demands (who don't have anywhere else to turn to for a discrete GPU). I mean ffs we have a 700 series part with a Fermi core and an 8000 series part with an Evergreen core.
Homeles - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
Why does this matter? People astute enough to read tech sites like this will be completely unaffected by this, as they'll research their products before purchasing.shady28 - Saturday, February 9, 2013 - link
It matters because most people simply don't peruse these forums, and never will.But one thing about 'truth' is that it does, eventually, come out into the public mind share. And when it does, AMD and NVIDIA will have destroyed their names.
I have absolutely no sympathy for them. -7.7% discrete GPU sales. A flagging PC game market. PC sales declining. There is no true reason for upgrading GPU or CPU more frequently than ~5 years now (GTX 260 does fine even today), and I suspect that will bump up to 7 or 8 years going forward.
These companies are failing to innovate.
paul878 - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
I just Rebadge my GTX260 to a GTX780 and won't be buying anything new anytime soon.Thank for show me how to save tons of money Nvidia and AMD.
themossie - Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - link
Brilliant!Of course, nVIDIA will rebrand your GTX780 into a 7800GT... then the joke's on you! :-)
CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - link
Since nVidia wouldn't dumb itself down enough to the level of my peers here, I drank a gallon of battery acid then hung upside down, so now video card names are all a jumble in my awesome "techie" brain that I use to blab my opinion here all the time about how hard it is to keep any video card speeds straight.I tried some baking soda but it didn't bring it back.
I'm still not mad at the OEM's because I'm too stupid to do that, so I still blame nVidia but not amd because amd does no evil.
Thanks for watching my drool, I'm glad there's good angel people out there watching my hunched over tard back, so I don't get ripped off.
I love the angel people who hate nvidia.
cynic783 - Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - link
rambling and a little scary, but funnybottom line, if it's my team, whatever they do is awesome
if it's the other team, whatever they do is evil (tm)
it makes me use my brain less
Flunk - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
All this rebadging is detrimental to their sales. Most people have no idea what any of their products are and just buy the cheapest current gen card. They could make a lot more money will more transparent branding.JonnyDough - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
Yep. I and many others stopped buying NV GPUs because of their rebadging and stupid naming schemes. If they had any sense at all they'd cruise the forums more for REAL customer feedback and realize this.TheJian - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6570/amds-annual-gpu...So you don't buy AMD cards then either eh? Dogging NV without realizing both companies do the same stuff for the exact same reason (OEM pressure) is ridiculous at best and biased at worst.
Both do the exact same thing. Both have stupid naming schemes.
It's not detrimental to EITHER companies sale, actually quite the contrary. The whole point is to fool the buying public at large (which means people NOT reading a site like this). It works rather well or at least doesn't matter. You either are buying a new pc or not, the public really doesn't care about a rebadge...It's in a new computer which is what they were after to begin with.
Most people don't buy new pc's but once every 4-6 years (much like business, except for the few who do it every 1-2 like me and many on here as we build our own). In that time whatever they buy in a NEW gpu card will more than double (at worst most likely) if they're buying in the same price range at both times. If you bought a PC even 3 years ago for say $900 (let along more normal 4-6yrs ago), whatever you buy today for $900 will KILL that pc in gpu and cpu too most likely. Having said that if you buy $900 3 years ago and try buying something for $400 today and expect to double/triple your gpu performance you deserve what you get (a rebadge and old chip tech that barely upgrades you and not probably noticeable).