Small Form Factor GPUs?

[Blorgon]

Okay, I did a search here, and not much came up. I'm not asking about existing models, I'm wondering what the limitations are for this type of GPU. Since the rest of the tech world seems hell bent on making things more compact and more powerful, why aren't GPUs following suit? Is it a physical limitation? Somebody here mentioned TDP being too high on the 770 and up. But that's a factor of heat dissipation, right? Why not develop a high end GPU designed specifically for water cooling?

I know, I know, there are plenty of ITX cases out there that fit full length blah blah blah... I'm really just asking a hypothetical here, since it's a direction I'd be super interested in seeing GPUs go.

 

[flopticalcube]

High TDP requires lots of power delivery via VRMs. These require board space and room for air to circulate and cool them. VRAM also consumes lots of board space as they are usually available only in small sizes like 256MB or 512MB so 8 are needed for a 2/4GB card. Its also the cooler space required to keep a 200W heater under 80C. New cards look promising, however, and I expect the 870 to be in the 150W range and probably be a 6 inch card like the 670/760.

 

[Blorgon]

High TDP requires lots of power delivery via VRMs. These require board space and room for air to circulate and cool them. VRAM also consumes lots of board space as they are usually available only in small sizes like 256MB or 512MB so 8 are needed for a 2/4GB card. Its also the cooler space required to keep a 200W heater under 80C. New cards look promising, however, and I expect the 870 to be in the 150W range and probably be a 6 inch card like the 670/760.

6", really?! That's a huge improvement! So, is that a measure of efficiency? I'm assuming the 870 would be about as powerful as the 770, but with greater memory bandwidth (right?), and some other things... so how do they knock the TDP down like that?

Mods, feel free to delete this topic if you think it's not worth having around—I just don't feel like reading through the 15 pages in the 880 thread.

 

[AFD]

No idea, but based on past naming schemes, I would expect the 680 < 770 < 860 to be of similar performance, and possibly 780 < 870 and 780Ti < 880.

Right now, the fastest Nvidia card in half-length is the ASUS 760 Mini (MSI 760 Gaming ITX), and earlier this year there were rumors of a 770 short card in the works (which never happened).

My ITX can certainly fit a full-size card, but for my plans, I'd much rather have a short card with the performance of a 770 or better, and 4GB. Hopefully this is possible with Maxwell gen-2.