Nvidia Pascal GPU has 17 billion transistors

[BoFox]

Ocre, it's the 660 Ti, not the 670 Ti.

Wrong.

You must not be familiar with the 40 to 28nm transition. Before the GTX 680 and 7970 there was a card leaked out called gtx 670ti.
This was at a time when every rumor was pointing to gk100 being DOA due to major capacity and yield  limitations.  Everyone in the media knew that nvidia could not launch their big chip and it would be put off for a long time.  
There was indications that nvidia would only be able to launch their gk104 chip and ride it out.

It was in that time frame there was very real looking leaks of a chip called the GTX 670ti.
Not only were their performance charts, we also had clock speeds (even memory if I remember correctly), physical pictures of the card, and even finished box art.

These were full flat gk104 chips with extremely conservative clocks and a different sticker. The thing is, how could nvidia be ready to launch at such a low clock and memory speed when the gk104 was capable of so much higher performance?  
I believe the whole thing could have been planted.  Because the 670ti did not launch at all.  Yet, it appeared to be finalized and ready to go....down to the boxes being printed.
Even more interesting is that their were people that had these cards and ran benches with them. This is where I think some of the performance leaks came from.  These people were eventually issued a new bios which they claimed transformed the card from a 700 mhz slow memory card to the way faster 1000mhz that had turbo boost along with super high speed memory for that time.  Just a bios update and new driver then it turned into a very different card.

I find it hard to accept that nvidia didn't know their silicon and what speeds it could run. That they didn't know this before creating a severely gimped gk104 that was already out in people's hands with a retail box and shroud.  That they didn't know the memory and bus capabilities ahead of time.  It seems crazy to me.

We know that once early silicon is back, the engineers throw them thru the ringer. They figure out all characteristics, the general clock speed vs voltage range, the power consumption curve and so so much more.  It's irrational to think otherwise.

See, the 680 launched way faster, at way higher clocks and bandwidth and all that in a smaller power envelope compared to the 7970.  A whole lot less power than a 580.  I tend to believe far too much leaked out on a cars that never launched.  
You know, we never see the retail box unless the cards are just about to be shipped out.

Wow, it's been so long ago (28nm being so long in the tooth) that I actually pretty much forgot about this, but now I remember thanks to you!

AMD's move is just pathetic - AMD should have had a hidden Ace up its sleeve, ready to trump the game after NV launched GTX 1080.  Nvidia already knows that it's like 8800GT/9800GTX vs HD 3870 all over again, with AMD being careful on new 14nm GloFo process. 

I think that AMD desperately wants to beat NV to the punch with HBM2 memory, so AMD is probably placing all bets on this waiting game (early 2017).