G92 pic shows single-slot coolerFirst leaked picBy Paul Hales: Thursday, 04 October 2007, 3:01 PM NVIDIA'S FABLED G92 may have heat problems , but it is still looking like being a single slot cooler design - if the first leaked pic of the card is anything to go by.The pic can be found right here. It's a sleek, full-bodied design with only a nick in the back for the PCI-E power connector. The fan is of the same variety we've seen on recent Nvidia cards, and the full-length heatsink means there'll be some nice cooling applied to the VRMs at the back of the card, too.The card really doesn't look anything special, although its single-slot design does appear to put the nail in the coffin of any lingering doubt that this is a new high-end card from Nvidia. µ
Nvidia's G92 is little more than G80 in 65nmVP2 engine, 128 scalar unitsBy Theo Valich: Wednesday, 10 October 2007, 4:17 PM THE TIME for GeForce 8800GT is drawing near. The card will launch at the end of October, just in time for all those lovely games of November.The GPU itself has 128 "super-scalar shader units" inside, and there have not been many changes over improving the efficiency of the design. The 8800GT will come to market with 112 units, disabling 16 units in order to get the yields as high as possible (similar to Cell CPU and its six or seven SPE out of eight ones actually manufactured in silicon). This will probably continue with future appearances of lower models, like "8800GS" (with an equal or lesser number of shader units).This is identical to original G80, which had 128 units, and those chips that did not make the cut came to market as 8800GTS, 320 or 640MB. Now, Nvidia is getting ready to minimise the remaining G80 inventory with re-launch of 8800GTS 640MB, sporting 112 units - equal to upcoming 8800GT.The chip itself is a 17x17mm die (289mm2), manufactured in both TSMC and UMC, with UMC order ranging between 850.000 and a million chips, depending on yield in hand. Nvidia is hoping to sell anywhere between two and three million chips ASAP, which is a hefty number for this part. Then again, with UT3 and Crysis, a new cycle will begin - so there is plenty of market interest.Depending on partner, Nvidia is pricing G92 chip at around the $100 mark. This means partners will have a margin in the form of lowly single-digit number. The first 20,000 or so boards are reserved for a magical $199 mark, for which you will be able to buy a G92 combined with 256MB of GDDR3 memory (most likely Hynix el'cheapola GDDR3 chip, known from 8800GTS 320MB and ATI Radeon HD2900XT). For a few dollars more, (ok, around 50) 512MB GDDR4 will be your pick.Nvidia is not officially supporting a third SKU, the 1GB card - but we learned that there is more than one partner in the chase to get the card with 1GB. These premium SKUs will probably go for between $299 and $349. This higher price will be reflected in performance, which is bound to exceed expectations. You might ponder the question of performance, and it is a good one. As far as we have heard, there will be SKUs on the market with 256, 512 and 1024 MB of video memory, 256MB one will be locked by the lack of physical memory, 512MB will prove sufficient if you don't go overboard with resolution, 1GB will buy you peace of mind.Of course, we're talking about performance in upcoming titles. 512MB will be a golden middle, but if you see a 8800GT with 1GB of memory, be ready to jump on it.
With the release of the GeForce 8800 GT less than two weeks away Foxconn has let the new card slip onto its website, complete with specs and board images. Foxconn's card used Nvidia's standard design and it features a 600 MHz core clock and 512MB of GDDR3 at 1800 MHz. As already rumored, the card will be PCI-Express 2.0 compliant and will feature full HDCP support. Foxconn's site has the chip of the 8800 GT as being G96 but as other images leaked earlier confirm the card will be powered by one G92 GPU. And now we wait.
Nvidia 8800 GT leaksPerformance, pictures presentedBy Wily Ferret: Monday, 22 October 2007, 7:08 AMNVIDIA'S LATEST product release is getting leakier by the minute, as more pics and benchmarks of the 8800 GT show up on the wibble over the weekend.Intrepid GeForce fans can find the box shot and card design for MSI's GT release right here. It's your typical dodgy CGI gaming girl fayre.Meanwhile, there are some new benchmarks of the card here, which look pretty hopeful for those looking to upgrade. At high resolutions, the GT appears to outperform both the existing 8800 GTS models in game tests, and beats out the 2900 XT in all but one test, too.That should make for a great price/performance ratio for new buyers, and a galling price/obselescence ratio for old ones.Prepare for more leaks as the week goes on - now we've seen a few companies reveal their wares, the rest won't be far behind. µ
Nvidia readies Geforce 9But not this year, sonnyBy Wily Ferret: Friday, 30 November 2007, 1:28 PM NVIDIA IS PLANNING to make lots of hay this Christmas, rolling out revisions to its mid-range GeForce 8 series and raking in the cash on the technology it has spent the last few years developing.But one thing is noticeably absent from the firm's Christmas lineup - any signs of GeForce 9.Earlier on this year, Nvidia's senior management were telling press in behind-the-scenes briefings that the plan was to stick to the GeForce 7 and 8 launch schedule - a new high-end part for Christmas, and mainstream spin-outs in Q1 and 2 the following year.This hasn't happened for GeForce 9. Why? Well, because it hasn't had to. The various re-spins of GeForce 8 are plenty powerful enough to keep Nvidia at cruising speed through the holiday season, without pulling out the big guns - after all, the competition this year has been barely worth looking at so the green team has had the market to itself.Well, now Digitimes reckons that GeForce 9 is on track for a February 2008 release date. It seems feasible, but there is nobody at Nvidia who will confirm this either way, not least because the company is notoriously wishy-washy when it comes to rumours. As for gamers - there's no doubting that they'd love to see a GeForce 9 this year, if only to get Crysis running at a decent speed. But when there's not much competition, there's no pressure to get parts out of the door - so perhaps ATI better get its act together for all your sakes, lest it's 2009 before we see the next major upgrade to the GeForce series. µ
Nvidia unveils G92 GTSWebsite snafuBy Wily Ferret: Tuesday, 04 December 2007, 3:14 PMNVIDIA HAS officially revealed the spec of G92 8800 GTS a full week before launch.In what appears to be a website boo-boo, the clocks and specs of the new card were posted to the GeForce 8 product page, here.However, the specs now appear to have been taken down - but not before eagle-eyed reporters snagged them.The spec list confirms what we knew by now - a default core and memory clock of 650/1000MHz, a 256-bit bus and an Ultra-busing shader clock of 1625MHz, the fastest in the Geforce 8 range.Stay tuned for the full details from the usual round of wibblers on Monda
