Mav's Post xmas present to himself?

[maverik-sg1]

IT HAPPENS every four months. Nvidia set the new trend of releasing its new top end card every four months and it's not going to stop now. It just released its ghost Geforce 7800 GTX 512 product and the demand for it is incredible. A lot of people want it as it’s the fastest card around for Yule but you just can not get any.

G71 will end up with a new Geforce name, new number and probably GTX suffix but it's still too early to talk about the final name. It will have a very fast core, we still don’t know the number but it should be around 700MHz and it's obviously paired with super fast memory. The memory is not the problem and even Samsung memory running at 1700 MHz+ is not in tight supply.

The chip will have 32 pipelines and it's obviously faster than just arrived and not so available Geforce 7800 GTX 512 cards. It's expected in early February and Nvidia is already playing with these cards.

Nvidia is working hard on its 90 nanometre process and its investors are really concerned about it. We figure out that mobile part based around G72 chip is 90 nanometre or at least should be based on that, and Nvidia is in volume production with its C51 chipsets, also 90 nanometre based. This card is meant to fight R580 ATI's new high end chip that is scheduled for a similar time.

 

[maverik-sg1]

In the RED corner......

It's codenamed R580 and it was taped out when Nvidia released its GTX 256 MB part. The first tape out was successful and the chip has looked good ever since.

It’s a 90 nanometre part with some marchitectural advantage and it will be all that we expected from R520 aka X1000 series chip. We know that ATI is in volume production of the R580 and it's getting ready for a late January, early February launch.

Let's go back in time. When ATI had its problems with R520 chips and could not clock them at over 500 MHz, it pushed the R580 plan forward and gave it priority. If ATI team could not resolve this nasty bug, ATI would just move to R580.

Well, the R520 is out and selling quite well and Nvidia helped ATI as it created an incredible demand for 512MB cards and now cannot deliver them. People are just going for the available Radeon X1800XT 512MB cards.

Interesting isn’t it but I have to say that X1800XT can not match Geforce 7800 GTX 512 performance but it's available.

The special thing about this card is that it will be able to process many more pixels than R520 but we need to understand it better before we give you the number. From what we know the card won't have more than sixteen pipelines but will be able to process much more than thirty two pixels per clock.

We know that R580 will be able to process many more pixels than the current R520 and it indicates it's going to end up as a much faster card. People believe that R580 will be all that we expected from R520, so after all we might be getting the real Radeon 9700 successor with a great speed and marchitecture. This card is about to fight the upcoming 90 nanometre, 32 pipes G71.

 

[Master_G]

Interesting stuff, Nvidia are also helping ATI with the crazy prices for the 512 GTXs.

Just out of interest, where is all this coming from? (who is the "we")

Think i will pick up a cheap GTX at that point then, or maybe the GT version of the new cards.

Maybe they will keep the price of the old cards high like they did last time. I will probs go second hand anyway, cant afford anything else atm.

Nice post Mav.

G

 

[maverik-sg1]

One of the things I do is get all the onfo from other sites I frequent and post em here - save you guys doing all the 'leg work'.

In addition - I have a friend in Taiwan who sometimes drops me a feew scraps that are worth posting.

All part of the friendly EPUK experience

 

[Phil Stanbridge]

All part of the friendly EPUK experience

Cheers Mav, excellent insight once again.

 

[K404]

Now you gotta go about getting a couple of early samples to see how good they are

 

[scorchio]

A littlle more info

Nvidia provided some updates on its near-term product strategy at a conference with financial analysts. While the first half of next year will focus on introducing updates for the current GeForce 7 generation - including the 90 nm model G71 with up to 750 MHz core clock and the entry-level chips G72 and G73 - the successor of the 7800 will be commercially available sometime in the second half of 2006.

Not surprisingly, G80 will be tailored to run with Windows Vista and its Aero Glass functionality. The new graphics processor will transition to DirectX 10 and support Shader Model 4.0, Nvidia said. It was indicated that the current G7x generation will be available for some time, serving the entry-level and mainstream segment. G80 promises to bring a completely new processor architecture.

 

[nick25]

Thanks for the info. Whats this Aero Glass functionality?

 

[scorchio]

Aero Glass, the higher-end user experience, will be a true superset of Aero and come with higher hardware requirements. "Aero Glass will provide a beautiful user interface experience, with transition animations. Window frames will be a bit blurry and translucent, making text easier to read. Transparencies and animations will be hallmarks of the Aero Glass user experience, with more modern, high quality visualizations than with [standard] Aero." Aero Glass will require a DirectX 9-compliant 3D graphics processor with at least 64 MB of RAM, though 128-256 MB of RAM will be recommended.

Hope this helps