By Theo Valich
RUMOUR HAS IT that upcoming G92 is a mainstream chip, not the high-end
refresh that the net has been wibbling about.
Well, we can tell you that this rumour is nothing else but a bit of
good old FUD, since either G92 is a high-end refresh or the company
decided that a replacement for 8800GTS will be significantly faster
than GeForce 8800 Ultra, leaving its high-end offering in shambles.
This baby sports some serious shading power, but more important is the
fact that the memory installed on board is now GDDR4. 768MB of GDDR4,
to be more precise. The amount of memory discards rumours of 256-bit
bus, since it is obvious that Nvidia will keep 384-bit memory
controller for the high-end series of products. We would welcome this
memory controller in mainstream arena, though.
The bandwidth has now jumped over the 105 GB/s barrier, and it remains
to be seen what will be the final clock of the memory - our estimate
is between 1.0 and 1.2 GHz, or 2.0-2.4 GHz, but final clocks are far,
far from being decided. The company needs to get the revised chip
first, in order to have DisplayPort working nice and cleanly. Display
Port is required for this company to get the Dell XPS contract - a new
machine will be launched for Winter 2007/08, probably during CES 2008
in Las Vegas.
The company has already had some revisions of the board sent to their
favourite game developers and other partners, and we can now tell you
that the board is almost identical to old 8800 GTX/Ultra ones.
We would like to see 1.5GB of memory on consumer boards as well - the
Quadro FX already spots 1.5GB of GDDR3 memory- but it is all a matter
of price. Qimonda's high-capacity GDDR3 sounds very tasty for Nvidia
plans, but for now. The reference boards sport Samsung GDDR4 chips.
G92 is in fact a 256-bit chip, and single G92 is like a 65nm shrinked G80 with 128-bit MC chopped off. Although that, it had some changes that makes it more efficient in given frequency.
And there is going to be a dual GPU configuration which would be a 7950GX2-like thing for higher high end market, let's call it "8950GX2" for now.......
And the first two into the market are 8800GT 256/512MB version, presumably IN STOCK by 29/Oct/2007, keep your eyes open! This single slot card uses only 110 Watt power and hits 8800GTX in some games (low res 1280-ish, no AA...)
Nvidia's G92 GPU does not get a 512-bit bus
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