NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 (G80): GPUs Re-architected for DirectX 10
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on November 8, 2006 6:01 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The 8800 GTX and GTS
Today we expect to see availability of two cards based on NVIDIA's G80 GPU: the GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS. Priced at $599 and $449 respectively, the two cards, as usual, differ in clock speeds and processing power.
8800 GTX (top) vs. 7900 GTX (bottom)
The 8800 GTX gets the full G80 implementation of 128 stream processors and 64 texture fetch units. The stream processors are clocked at 1.35GHz with the rest of the GPU running at 575MHz. The GTX has six 64-bit memory controllers operating in tandem, connected to 768MB of GDDR3 memory running at 900MHz. GDDR4 is supported but will be introduced on a later card.
NVIO: Driving a pair of TMDS transmitters near you
You get two dual-link DVI ports driven by NVIDIA's new NVIO chip that handles TMDS and other currently unknown functions. Keeping a TMDS on-die is a very difficult thing to do, especially if you have logic operating at such high clock speeds within the GPU, so with G80 NVIDIA had to move the TMDS off-die and onto this separate chip. The NVIO chip also supports HDCP, but you do need the crypto ROM keys in order to have full HDCP support on the card. That final decision is up to the individual card manufacturers, although at this price point we hope they all choose to include HDCP support.
The 8800 GTX has two PCIe power connectors and two SLI connectors:
Two SLI connectors on the 8800 GTX
Bridges in action
The dual power connectors are necessary to avoid drawing more power from a single connector than the current ATX specification allows for. The dual SLI connectors are for future applications, such as daisy chaining three G80 based GPUs, much like ATI's latest CrossFire offerings.
dual power connectors
The GeForce 8800 GTS loses 32 SPs bringing it down to 96 stream processors and 48 texture fetch units. The shader core runs at 1.2GHz, while the rest of the GTS runs at 500MHz. The GTS also has only five 64-bit memory controllers with 640MB of GDDR3 memory running at 800MHz.
7900 GTX (left) 8800 GTS (middle) 8800 GTX (right)
The 8800 GTS has the same NVIO chip as the 8800 GTX, but the board itself is a bit shorter and it only features one SLI connector and one PCIe power connector.
Only one power connector on an 8800 GTS
...and only one SLI connector
Both cards are extremely quiet during operation and are audibly indiscernible from a 7900 GTX.
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DerekWilson - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
i'm sure there was a lot burried in there ... sorry if it wasn't easy to find.8800 gtx and gtx are both no louder than 7900 gtx. 1950 xtx still takes the cake for loudest graphics card around by a long shot -- especially after it heats up in a game.
crystal clear - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
My comments in Daily Tech on this subject-More "G80" Derivatives in February R
E: More info would be nice
By crystal clear on 11/8/06, Rating: 2
By crystal clear on 11/8/2006 8:03:43 AM , Rating: 2
If you link VISTA -SANTA ROSA platform-Core2DUO(merom)CPU line up(T7300,7500,7700 models)then a matching Graphics card
to complete the link.
So a G80 for laptops/notebooks?
The pairing of Intels Santa Rosa platform with Vista in the 2Q 07 is next big thing for the first tier notebook manufacturers & all they need is a matching G80 for this setup.
Unquote-
Nvidia currently caters to Desktop requirement/needs with the new G80 releases,wonder how the notebook/server versions will be-with Vista ofcourse.
yyrkoon - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Vitual memory is probably a good thing for most cases, but in the graphics arena, this *could* potentially make for sloppy/ bad coding practises. Knowing a lot of game devers (some of which actually work for well known companies), I've heard them from time to time complain about maxing a 16x PCI-E pipe. What I'm trying to say here, is that while it would be a good thing for never having to run out of texture memory, but that system memory, and definately the swap disk can not hold a candle to the memory bandwidth that most Video cards are capable of. End result, is that you definately *will* get a performance hit. All this, and we already know the memory bandwidth capabilities of modern PCs, suffice it to say, the most we'll see from current systems is what ? 12-13K GB/s ? Even a 7800GS can do roughly 35 GB/s on card. A 7600GT ? 22GB/s ?Still I think Directx10 is a very good thing, and as I didnt read the whole article, perhaps a missed a little ? Reason being, I've been reading about Directx10 since April, and a friend of mine was privy to some of this information after an interview with ATI.
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/featu...">http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/featu...
saratoga - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
I don't know how they threading really works, but its quite possible VM support is required in order to allow multiple threads to run without stepping all over each other,.saratoga - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Sorry, should read "I don't know how THEIR threading works"falc0ne - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
I don't know what is the problem but I'm really unable to see the images within the latest articles from Anand...Can anyone give me a suggestion? What might be the cause of that?The thing is I'm really, really interested in these articles and I need to see those images. Thanks
yyrkoon - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Oh, er, then in the options tab of Firefox, (tools->options->content) check the "load images" check box ;)falc0ne - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
well...it would've been simple but I'm afraid is not that...It might be the addblock extension from firefox, other than that I have nooo ideeea...Well I will use the IE tab option instead and load the pages using IE 7. Thanks anyway:)yyrkoon - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Checked the exceptions list ? I know that firefox makes it really simple to block images from a site (to a point of being too easy).JarredWalton - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
If you've got AdBlock on Firefox, press Ctrl+Shift+A and you can see what it's blocking. If it blocks the images.anandtech.com stuff, you can then see which RegEx isn't working right and edit that.