NVIDIA's 1.4 Billion Transistor GPU: GT200 Arrives as the GeForce GTX 280 & 260
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 16, 2008 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Power and Power Management
Power is a major concern of many tech companies going forward, and just adding features "because we can" isn't the modus operandi anymore. Now it's cool (pardon the pun) to focus on power management, performance per watt, and similar metrics. To that end, NVIDIA has beat their GT200 into such submission that it's 2D power consumption can reach as low as 25W. As we will show below, this can have a very positive impact on idle power for a very powerful bit of hardware.
These enhancements aren't breakthorugh technologies: NVIDIA is just using clock gating and dynamic voltage and clock speed adjustment to achieve these savings. There is hardware on the GPU to monitor utilization and automatically set the clock speeds to different performance modes (either off for hybrid power, 2D/idle, HD video, or 3D/performance). Mode changes can be done on the millisecond level. This is very similar to what AMD has already implemented.
With increasing transistor count and huge GPU sizes with lots of memory, power isn't something that can stay low all the time. Eventually the hardware will actually have to do something and then voltages will rise, clock speed will increase, and power will be converted into dissapated heat and frames per second. And it is hard to say what is more impressive, the power saving features at idle, or the power draw at load.
There is an in between stage for HD video playback that runs at about 32W, and it is good to see some attention payed to this issue specifically. This bodes well for mobile chips based off of the GT200 design, but in the desktop this isn't as mission critical. Yes reducing power (and thus what I have to pay my power company) is a good thing, but plugging a card like this into your computer is like driving an exotic car: if you want the experience you've got to pay for the gas.
Idle power so low is definitely nice to see. Having high end cards idle near midrange solutions from previous generations is a step in the right direction.
But as soon as we open up the throttle, that power miser is out the door and joules start flooding in by the bucket.
Cooling NVIDIA's hottest card isn't easy and you can definitely hear the beast moving air. At idle, the GPU is as quiet as any other high-end NVIDIA GPU. Under load, as the GTX 280 heats up the fan spins faster and moves much more air, which quickly becomes audible. It's not GeForce FX annoying, but it's not as quiet as other high-end NVIDIA GPUs; then again, there are 1.4 billion transistors switching in there. If you have a silent PC, the GTX 280 will definitely un-silence it and put out enough heat to make the rest of your fans work harder. If you're used to a GeForce 8800 GTX, GTS or GT, the noise will bother you. The problem is that returning to idle from gaming for a couple of hours results in a fan that doesn't want to spin down as low as when you first turned your machine on.
While it's impressive that NVIDIA built this chip on a 65nm process, it desperately needs to move to 55nm.
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gigahertz20 - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
I think these ridiculous prices and lackluster performance is just a way for them to sell more SLI motherboards, who would buy a $650 GTX 280 when you can buy two 8800GT's with a SLI mobo and get better performance? Especially now that the 8800GT's are approaching around $150.crimson117 - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
It's only worth riding the bleeding edge when you can afford to stay there with every release. Otherwise, 12 months down the line, you have no budget left for an upgrade, while everyone else is buying new $200 cards that beat your old $600 card.So yeah you can buy an 8800GT or two right now, and you and me should probably do just that! But Richie Rich will be buying 2x GTX 280's, and by the time we could afford even one of those, he'll already have ordered a pair of whatever $600 cards are coming out next.
7Enigma - Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - link
Nope, the majority of these cards go to Alienware/Falcon/etc. top of the line, overpriced pre-built systems. These are for the people that blow $5k on a system every couple years, don't upgrade, might not even seriously game, they just want the best TODAY.They are the ones that blindly check the bottom box in every configuration for the "fastest" computer money can buy.
gigahertz20 - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
Very few people are richie rich and stay at the bleeding edge. People that are very wealthy tend not to be computer geeks and purchase their computers from Dell and what not. I'd say at least 96% of gamers out there are value oriented, these $650 cards will not sell much at all. If anything, you'll see people claim to have bought one or two of these in forums and other places, but their just lying.perzy - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
Well I for one is waiting for Larabee. Maybee (probably) it isen' all that its cranked up to be, but I want to see.And what about some real powersaving Nvidia?
can - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
I wonder if you can just flash the BIOS of the 260 to get it to operate as if it were a 280...7Enigma - Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - link
You haven't been able to do this for a long time....they learned their lessons the hard way. :)Nighteye2 - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
Is it just me, or does this focus on compute power mean Nvidia is starting to get serious about using the GPU for physics, as well as graphics? It's also in-line with the Ageia acquisition.will889 - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
At the point where NV has actually managed to position SLI mobos and GPU's where you actually need that much power to get decent FPS (above 30 average) from games gaming on the PC will be entirely dead to all those but the most esoteric. It would be different if there were any games worth playing or as many games as the console brethren have. I thought GPU's/cases/power supplies were supposed to become more efficient? EG smaller but faster sort of how the TV industry made TV's bigger yet smaller in footprint with way more features - not towering cases with 1200KW PSU's and 2X GTX 280 GPU's? All this in the face o drastically raised gas prices?Wanna impress me? How about a single GPU with the PCB size of a 7600GT/GS that's 15-25% faster than a 9800GTX that can fit into a SFF case? needing a small power supply AND able to run passively @ moderate temps. THAT would be impressive. No, Seargent Tom and his TONKA_TRUCK crew just have to show how beefy his toys can be and yank your wallet chains for said. Hell, everyone needs a Boeing 747 in their case right? cause' that's progress for those 1-2 gaming titles per years that give you 3-4 hours of enjoyable PC gaming.....
/off box
ChronoReverse - Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - link
The 4850 might actually hit that target...