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GeForce 8800 GTX
Okay in short .. as you should know by now NVIDIA developed the GeForce 8800 series under the graphics core codename G80. Expect a LOT of new products in 2007 as this core is the new basis architecture for things to come. I expect the first mid and low range products already in February, close to the CeBIT and obviously somewhat merged together with the public release of the ridiculously priced Microsoft's Windows Vista, for which NVIDIA still did not release GeForce 8800 Vista drivers !
Windows Vista requires a DirectX 9 compatible graphics card, so do not worry as a DX10 card is not a requirement ! It however is desired, and exactly that is creating a gap in the market that NVIDIA would love to fill. And trust me when I say they will.
Until February however we'll have two Series 8 products available followed by a good number of series 7 cards. T
he two cards are as speculated the 640MB GeForce 8800 GTS and the big pappa graphics card called the GeForce 8800 GTX that comes with no less than 768MB memory. So how does the GeForce product line shape up until February ? Have a look:- GeForce 8800 GTX - $599
- GeForce 8800 GTS - $449
- GeForce 7950 GT - $299
- GeForce 7900 GS - $199
- GeForce 7600 GT - $159
- GeForce 7600 GS - $129
- GeForce 7300 GPUs - <$99
Be afraid, be very afraid! Next to being a 681 million transistor accounting MONSTER (G70 had ~300 Million transistors), this is going is the top of the line product. The big kahuna, the mack daddy, the quarter pounder, the beast that pimps your rig... the US Enterprise on a PCB! It's also rather exclusive as you can expect a sales price of 599 USD and I'm not talking about the niche water-cooled version we are testing today. Now before you point a middle finger at me hear me out okay ?
It took NVIDIA four years to build and it took 400 Million dollars to develop. Obviously in the coming year well see a stackload of products based on this new mArchitecture. But hey I mean this is it, this is the graphics card you want in your uber powered PC. It has the (on 90nm fabricated) G80 core and ALL features as discussed below. It has the 128 streaming cores (Unified Shader processors), it comes with 768 MB of gDDR3 memory that theoretically can push 86 GB/second of memory bandwidth. Again, think about that for a second. 86 GIGABYTES per second memory bandwidth that is being utilized by a 128 Shader cores with a 681 Million transistor counting micro-architecture.
So this is the card with a total of 768 MB of gDDR3 memory at 384-bit (actually 12 pieces of 16Mx32 memory) with that memory clocked at 2x 900 MHz, and a "core" clock at 575 MHz with the 128 Unified Shaders running at 1350 MHz. No water-cooling solution, just a big dual-slot cooler (which actually is quite silent) on a large long black PCB with two 6-pin power connectors.
Size then, and I noticed the concern in our forums once specs started to leak out, indeed the card is very long. The GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card is 27 CM long. But note that the power connectors are now routed off the top edge of the graphics card instead of the end of the card, so there is no extra space required at the end of the graphics card for power cabling. You might want to measure before buying though.
