For the mainstream and performance Pascal lineup, Nvidia relies on three different GPU dies. For the GTX 1050’s we have the GP107 while the GTX 1060’s use the GP106 and the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 utilize the GP104. In order to fill out the lineup, the lower end version of each respective lineup uses a cut-down version of the corresponding full die. According to a new leak, Nvidia is preparing new GPU in the GTX 1060 lineup using the higher end GP104 die.
With the gap between the GTX 1060 and the GTX 1070, the obvious conclusion is that Nvidia is planning on a GTX 1060 Ti to fill in the gap. This does not appear to be the case at all however as the report suggests that the new GPU using the cut down GP104 is the GTX 1060 3GB. That’s pretty crazy once you consider that the GTX 1060 3GB has less than half the CUDA cores featured in the GP104 die. It’s pretty weird too to be skipping out on utilizing it for the GTX 1060 6GB either as event that would make more sense.
The only possibility for such a drastic culling in the die to make sense is due to faulty ROPs. Both the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 require 64 ROPs. This means if some ROPs are faulty, the die can’t be used at all for these chips. The next possible candidates would be the GTX 1060’s which both feature 48 ROPs and can deal with a few being faulty from the total of 64 available from GP104.
According to the report, the extra CUDA cores will be locked by the BIOS. It will be interesting to see if those can be unlocked by the mod and what that will mean for stability. There is some indication though that this is a China-exclusive model, perhaps due to high GTX 1060 3GB demand not being met by GP106 dies. Hopefully, we will get more information shortly.
