The GeForce GTX200 series GPU Information Thread

[Perry]

Dang! Look at the IHS on the core. That thing must crank the heat if they've resorted to it.

At least...I think that's an IHS.

[linskingdom]

We may have some preliminary numbers/benchmarks as early as late next week.

[Blameless]

Originally Posted by Perry

Dang! Look at the IHS on the core. That thing must crank the heat if they've resorted to it.

At least...I think that's an IHS.

It is an IHS.

It's more to protect the core and minimized the need for a perfect base on the stock heatsinks. An IHS does not help cooling.

[linskingdom]

It looks good so far. Seems to be a good summer show.

[linskingdom]

In just under a month Nvidia will release the GeForce GTX 280 and 260 cards and because of them the homes of big-spenders will get much hotter. The G(T)200 chip that powers both GTX models is manufactured using 65nm technology and will be one if not the hottest desktop-prone GPU around so naturally it will need appropriate cooling.

Of course Nvidia will be providing a decent (but we're not sure how loud) cooling solution but those who want their card to not suffer too much, especially during the more extreme summer days will have to look elsewhere. Coming to the rescue Aqua Computer has designed and unveiled a waterblock that will work with the GeForce GTX 280 (and likely the 260 too). Made out of crispy copper the waterblock will have G1/4" connectors and channels optimized for very low flow resistance. No word on pricing yet but we can wait three weeks (BEd: We can't afford the GTX 280 anyway).

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[linskingdom]

GeForce GTX 280 is going to be a mighty beast. The GT200 core impressed us from the very beginning in matters of raw performance. Alas there have been little information on the real-life performance of the card, other than statements that it runs Crysis fine at certain settings and that it scores 7000 points in the Vantage Extreme profile. We've been provided some more solid information based on the performance in Stanford's Folding@Home client. A slide recently presented says that GeForce GTX 280 will be capable of folding slightly more than 500 mol/day, which is three times more than what Radeon HD 3870 can do, about 170 mol/day (according to the slide), or five times more than PlayStation 3; 100 mol/day.

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[phospholipid]

Originally Posted by linskingdom

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Any estimated costs lins? i was in the market for a card to get back into gaming, this might be the card for me.

[linskingdom]

Originally Posted by phospholipid

Any estimated costs lins? i was in the market for a card to get back into gaming, this might be the card for me.

As of today, $499 for GT280 but I don't think this is correct. We should know more as early as next week.

[PizzaMan]

$500-$600 sounds about right :/

[linskingdom]

NVIDIA STAGED ITS regular editors' day, and once again, we were not invited. Luckily, that means we can tell you about it early.

With the usual flair of spin and statistics which almost no one questions for fear of being cut off, NV talked about two new GPUs, the GTX280 and GTX260. The 280 is the big one, the 260 is the mid range, what used to be the GTS.

The 280 has 240 stream processors and runs at a clock of 602MHz, a massive miss on what the firm intended. The processor clock runs at 1296MHz and the memory is at 1107MHz. The high-end part has 1G of GDDR3 at 512b width. This means that they are pretty much stuck offering 1G cards, not a great design choice here.

The 280 has 32ROPs and feeds them with a six and eight-pin PCIe connector. Remember NV mocking ATI over the eight-pin when the 2900 launched, and how they said they would never use it? The phrase 'hypocritical worms' come to mind, especially since it was on their roadmap at the time. This beast takes 236W max, so all those of you who bought mongo PSUs may have to reinvest if they ever get three or four-way SLI functional.

The cards are 10.5-inch parts, and each one will put out 933GFLOPS. Looks like they missed the magic teraflop number by a good margin. Remember we said they missed the clock frequencies by a lot? Here is where it must sting a bit more than usual, sorry NV, no cigar.

The smaller brother, aka low-yield, salvage part, the GTX260 is basically the same chips with 192 SPs and 896M GDDR3. If you are maths-impaired, let me point out that this equates to 24 ROPs.

The clocks are 576MHz GPU, 999MHz memory and 896MHz GDDR3 on a 448b memory interface. The power is fed by two six-pin connectors. Power consumption for this 10.5-inch board is 182W.

This may look good on paper, but the die is over 550mm, 576 according to Theo, on the usual TSMC 65nm process. If you recall, last quarter NV blamed its tanking margins on the G92 yields.

How do you fix a low yield problem? Well, in Nvidia-land, you simply add massive die area to a part so the yields go farther down. 576 / 325 = 1.77x. Hands up anyone who thinks this will help them meet the margin goals they promised? Remember, markets are closed Monday, so if you sleep in, no loss.

The 260 will be priced at $449 and go up against the ATI 770/4870 costing MUCH less. The 280 will be about 25 per cent faster and quite likely lose badly to the R700, very badly, but cost more, $600+.

As we said, it is going to be an interesting summer

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