According to the latest whispersNvidia has allegedly designed two reference PCBs with GDDR5X and GDDR5 compatibility forits GP104 GPU basedGTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards. The latest whispers claim that Nvidia has decided to create a "premium" GP104 board based on the GP104-400 GPU that is going to power theflagship Pascal GeForce GTX graphics card this year. Otherwise known as the GTX 1080 in the web's echochambers, this "premium" boardwill allegedly feature GDDR5X rather than GDDR5.

Whilst Nvidia's more mainstream GP104 based graphics card, the purported GTX 1070, will be based on a cut down version of the same GP104 chip code named GP104-200 and feature 8GbpsGDDR5 chips instead.This rumor comes straight from the chiphell forums via bitsandchips.it, which have also brought us the leaked GP104 die shots a few days ago. So while there maybe veracity to these claims, we'd still advise our readers to take this with the usual grain of salt.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 And GeForce GTX 1070 To Feature Different PCBs Due to Different GDDR5X & GDDR5 Pin Layout

According to the same source two different PCB designs are necessary due to the different pin layout of GDDR5X and GDDR5 chips. So whilst the GP104 GPU is claimed to be compatible with both memory technologies, the different pin layout doesn't allow GDDR5X to be a simple drop-in replacement.

The leaked GP104 die shot revealed that the pictured graphics board features 8Gbps Samsung GDDR5 memory chips. Unfortunately thenscripted info on the die has been omitted, otherwise we would've been able to determine whether this is GP104-400 or GP104-200 and validate the rumored claims of GP104-400 using GDDR5X.Assuming the whispers are true, this die shot should be ofGP104-200 and this should be a GTX 1070 board rather than aGTX 1080.

The first wave of GDDR5X memory chips that Micron has started sampling last month and will be mass producing in the summerare rated at10Gbps, 11Gbps and 12Gbps. Which means that the fastest GDDR5X configuration willyield up to 50% more bandwidth vs the 8Gbps GDDR5 memory chips pictured above.

Because theGP104 GPU is configured with a 256bitmemory interface. With 10gbpsGDDR5Xchips chosen,the GTX 1080 will have access to320GB/s of memory bandwidth. That's up to 43% more compared to the GTX 980 and just 5%less than the GTX 980 Ti.

Nvidia Pascal Specs

Micron announced late last month that it's already shipping 10Gbps, 11Gbps and 12Gbps samples to its customers. Which means that Nvidia, as well as AMD, have already got access toGDDR5X chips to test and will be ready to roll out graphics cards featuring the new memory technology as production ramps up this summer.This indicates that the decision to use bothGDDR5X and GDDR5 memory technologies as opposed to justGDDR5X wasdriven mainly by a desire from Nvidia to reduce cost.

So far all rumors and leaks point towards a Computex, late May, announcementand June launch of Nvidia's next generation Pascal GP104 based GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards. Whether Nvidia will actually name their next generation GTX 980 and GTX 970 replacements GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 is subject to speculation at this point. But I fully expect Nvidia to roll out a new naming scheme for its new products this year.

Nvidia's Pascal Architecture - Fewer, Faster CUDA Cores With Significantly Higher Per Thread Throughput

We dove deep into Nvidia's Pascal architecture last week after the company's GTC 2016 reveal of the Tesla P100 and the flagship Pascal GP100 GPU that will be launching in 2017. We discussed all the architectural updates that Nvidia has made to Pascal which I'd highly recommend that you check out if you're interested in finding out how much faster Pascal is going to be.

A few very significant changes from Maxwell to Pascal stick out. Each Pascal CUDA core has been beefed up considerably compared to Maxwell and clock speeds have gone up by 33%. So core for core, Pascal will be much faster than Maxwell.