Quote Originally Posted by bhavv View Post
I disagree, holding it back means that they dont need to spend as much on R+D for their next card. They have a card out now that comfortably beats the 7970, so they had no need to release a better one.

The GTX 680 was actually originally meant to have been the 670 Ti:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...-as-GTX-670-Ti

Im sure that the GTX 680 would have at least been a 384 bit card with an 8 + 6 pin power conector.
Perhaps. With the GTX 680 in theory being cheaper to manufacture than the HD 7970 it would make sense to hold the GTX 680 as the flagship card until AMD releases their HD 7990. Then, releasing a GTX 685/690 based on a 300w Kepler core(with a die size somewhere around GF100-G200) would set them up to compete on performance with less expensive silicon going in to this performance crown card.

Still, I doubt they developed GK104 and GK110 at the same time. Makes more sense from a risk management point to develop a small core on 28nm. Beats the hell out of having another GTX 480.