In the world of graphics cards, it’s not just NVIDIA, Intel or AMD. No, there are other manufacturers like Bolt Graphics. In fact, this brand has announced the final design of its Zeus GPUs . Broadly speaking, these are pro cards that promise solid path tracing performance, all at low power consumption. In this area, performance is claimed to be 5x higher than that of the RTX 5090, with significantly lower power consumption!
Zeus: GPUs for HPC with solid path tracing performance!
Several configurations on offer!
To put it simply, Bolt Graphics has announced the successful completion of its tape-out phase for its Zeus GPUs. As a result, we’re talking about several configurations for these cards, with single-chip (1c26) and dual-chip (2c26) models. As for the process used, the company is basing itself on TSMC’s 12 FFC. The single-chip board is compact, with a full-length PCB, but a single-slot design. Specifications include theoretical performance of 5/10/20 TFLOPs in FP64/32/16. We’re also talking about 307.2 and 614.4 TFLOPs in INT16 and INT8, while the chip features 128 MB of cache. As for memory, we’re talking about 32 GB of LPDDR5X expandable to 160 GB with a bandwidth of 363 GB/s. Finally, in path tracing, it outputs 77 Gigarays and can handle up to two 8K60 streams. The TDP is 120W.
For the dual-chip version, it’s simple: we use the same data sheet, but double the values. The TDP rises to 250W. Don’t forget to mention that the boards feature dedicated memory capacities expandable via two or four DDR5 SO-DIMM slots, depending on whether the board is equipped with one or two GPUs.
With this, we’re back to a version designed for 2U server racks. Here, the configuration is even angrier, with 2 GB of cache and 9216 GB of memory running at 5.8 TB/s, plus 1 TB of LPDDR5X and 32 GB of DDR5 via DIMM. Path tracing performance is announced at 1228 Gigarays.
5x the path tracing performance of an RTX 5090?
In terms of performance, the company compares its Zeus solutions to the RTX 5090, which remains a solid card, even in the pro sector. In this respect, Bolt Graphics’ 2c26 achieves x5 path tracing compared to NVIDIA’s 5090, with significantly reduced power consumption. While the RTX 5090 boasts a TDP of 575W, here we’re down to 250W. As for HPC performance, the cards do x6 and up to 300x better in EM simulation… But in this case, it’s a four-chip configuration.
Of course, these figures should be treated with caution, as they are manufacturer’s figures only. We’ll just have to see what happens when the GPUs are released!
