Nvidia: Difference between revisions

===Artificial FP64 Limitation on Consumer GPUs (''2012 - 2014'')===

On Kepler-era GK110 graphics cards, Nvidia used a driver-imposed clock rate restriction to artificially limit double precision floating point (FP64) compute performance on consumer variants, despite the hardware being fully capable. The GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti share the GK110 die with the Tesla K40, which delivers FP64 at 1/3 the rate of FP32. On the consumer cards, the driver deliberately clocked the FP64 units at 1/8 of the chip's base rate, yielding a 1/24 ratio.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Angelini |first=Chris |date=2013-11-07 |title=Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review: GK110, Fully Unlocked |url=https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-780-ti-review-benchmarks,3663.html |url-status=live |access-date=2026-03-02 |website=Tom's Hardware}}</ref> The GTX Titan, also based on GK110, shipped with a driver control panel toggle that could unlock the full 1/3 FP64 rate at the cost of disabling GPU Boost, confirming the limitation was a software restriction rather than a hardware one.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Angelini |first=Chris |date=2013-02-19 |title=Compute Performance And Striking A Balance - Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan 6 GB: GK110 On A Gaming Card |url=https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-titan-gk110-review,3438-3.html |url-status=live |access-date=2026-03-02 |website=Tom's Hardware}}</ref> From the Maxwell architecture onward, Nvidia switched to physically reducing the number of FP64 cores on consumer dies, ending the driver restriction but continuing hardware-level segmentation between consumer and enterprise products.