NVIDIA lowers Tesla specs for servers

The Inquirer reports NVIDIA's new Fermi-based Tesla cards run at lower clockspeeds than the desktop counterparts to reduce heat output. It seems those engineering feats were helped, in a manner of speaking, by Nvidia itself, through a decrease in the shader count and clock speeds. The latest specifications detail a 18 per cent clock decrease, coupled with a previously announced 12.5 per cent cut in the number of "stream processors" from 512 to 448, and the board tipped up drawing 10 per cent more power than previous vague estimates that had been bandied about by the firm late last year.

Given that server vendors flog their units by stressing the performance per watt per square foot metric, Nvidia's cuts in performance and increase in power won't help Appro or Supermicro shift too many of their boxes kitted out with Tesla cards.