Get ready for 200W GPUs. Now! The next gen starts at 175WBy Charlie Demerjian: Sunday 30 July 2006, 17:46ACCORDING TO PC WATCH, the next round of GPUs are going to be really smoking, not because they are fast, but because they suck power like it is going out of style. If you read the article (here and translated here), you will see the damage that will be done to the world's petroleum reserves.The short story is this, G80 form Nvidia is looking to suck down 175W on a 90nm process, probably a bit less on 80nm. R600 from ATI is looking to take about 200W in 80nm, and less if they pull off a shrink to 65nm.Either way, this is simply too much. The current 100+W is borderline insane, and adding half again to it is just silly, speed is OK, but I think we have just passed the point of being ludicrous. When you are at more than twice the power of the CPU, it is time to hit yourself on the head with the same high velocity cluestick that AMD and Intel have already experienced. µ
If they serious about that much power, then they just might have to use a separate power supply for the video card.
Nvidia remains tight lipped on G80 Almost cyanoseBy Fuad Abazovic: Friday 18 August 2006, 19:23 WE tried to find more details about Nvidia's G80 but no one knows a lot about the chip. Possibly not even Nvidia, because it's telling its partners nada.We know it's a 90 nanometre chip and that it is taped out but a release date is an enigma caught in a graphics processor engine dilemma.One single source suggested that the chip might show up later than expected, by the end of ammo domini 2006. We found out that the chip will actually alight on the face of the earth a little bit later than we expected. Nvidia wants to fight the upcoming Radeon 1950 XTX with its Geforce 7950 GX2 double chip card. It won't have G80 out at least by the end of September. And it is more tight lipped than a tight lipped Tightlip.G80 now looks like a late 2006 chip and it will fight the R600 beast also scheduled for a very late 2006, when even the mice slumber. Another source claimed that it's all on schedule. We reported that G80 is a 90 nanometre chip with GDDR 4 support and that it is diss-unified marchitecture. We guess Nvidia is now paranoid about AMD, Intel, S3 and everyone else. µ
G80 late because of a respin External PSU and November tech dayBy Charlie Demerjian: Tuesday 12 September 2006, 13:50 NVIDIA'S G80 is still somewhat of a mystery, with a lot of speculation but little on the record. We have a few more bits, and some smoke and mirrors to tell you about, and it lines up pretty nicely with a lot of earlier info.First is timing. At Computex, and as we reported earlier, Nvidia had silicon up and running. If all went well, that would mean silicon up in early June, 10-12 weeks for production chips and another month for boards, the September/October launch dates floating seemed likely.We hear there was another spin in August, not huge, but a spin anyway, and first Silicon is due back any day now. If all goes well, that means another 3-4 months before boards are done, and you are looking at late November. NV has a reviewers/tech day tentatively set for early November, so think in the month for parts.Since Nvidia decided they hate us again, look for coverage earlier rather than later, handcuffs are easier to avoid than to ignore. Either way, they will be thinking of us, smooches fellas. This means launches in the middle of the Christmas shopping season, and short supplies after that, make sure the kids know what they won't be getting.So, it is going to be late, that is not the ugly bit, board partners are telling us that it very well might have an external PSU to power the beast. We told you it was going to be hot, but not as hot as an R600. Either way, this does not bode well for either card. Think of a monster with a brick to keep it from running away.The chip itself is another story, and from the initial info we have, it is going to be a weird beastie. So weird in fact that it deserves a bit of digging before we say for sure. California wakes up in 3 hours, time to warm up the phones. µ
