Theo Valich reports the new Quadro FX 4800 and 5800 workstation graphics cards from NVIDIA feature 55nm GT206/212 GPUs. These are the two GPUs that will soon power the GeForce GTX 270 and GeForce GTX 290, little is known about these cards but the specifications of the Quadro cards hint at a much lower power consumption.
G200-302 Rev A2 begun manufacturing back in September, and the first parts are now finding their way to mass manufacturing. The chip features a die size of 470mm2, 107mm2 less than the original G200 chip. This just goes to show the vast difference between 65nm and 55nm - if Nvidia had the balls to go with 55nm chip back in May, the prices of GTX260/280 parts could have been way cheaper and offer much more flexibility, but we can�t cry over spilt milk. 55nm part is here now, and it will consume much less power than is the case with the 65nm one.
The 55nm GPU consumes roughly 50% less power than it was the case with 65nm one, and this difference is more than massive. When I did quick power checks, the GTX280 at 650/1500/2200 would eat around 266W, while the default clocked GTX280 (600/1300/2200) was specc�ed at 238W.
Well, the 55nm GPU will eat around 170W at 650/1500/2200, meaning that GTX290 just got 100W of power to play with. If you�re into overclocking, you can now start dreaming about clocking those 240 shaders to 1.7-1.8 GHz range (perhaps even 2.0 if water-cooling setup is powerful enough), and achieve massive performance gains, all happening while you�re consuming less power than a stock clocked GTX280.
The chips are shipping
Nvidia is planning to have its 55nm GT200 cards in retail / etail by early December. The company has started shipping these chips a few weeks ago and evaluation boards have been manufactured a few weeks ago, too.
Now the wait is purely logistic as it takes a long time to get the cards from Taiwan and China back to the western world. We learned that new cards should overclock better, but the first wave will be clocked at the same speeds as Geforce GTX 260, 216 Shaders and we suspect that GTX 280 cards will also get a new 55nm chip.
The new chip should have drastically lower power consumption and it should overclock higher and luckily we won’t have to wait much more to find that out.
To be continued, meni sve ovo izgleda jadno i bedno, svaki potez koji su napravili je tolika suprotnost za nV koja je nekada bila simbol kvaliteta i performansi..... Daj boze da ovo ispadne dobro :S:
😡:smash::lupko::S:
nece valjda...
istini za volju, 8800gt je jos uvek dobra karta, a eto meni jos jednog bios upgrade-a :d
Nvidia Corp. may be preparing a massive assault on the high-end graphics cards market with its new high-end graphics processor made using thinner process technology. The offence may be accompanied by substantial price-slash, which should increase popularity of Nvidia GeForce GTX 200-series and steal market share from ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices.
According to a picture of Nvidia G200 chip (which was published by Expreview web-site) produced using 55nm process technology (which is also known as G200b, GT200b, GT206, G200 revision B, etc), the company has been producing the chips since mid-August, 2008, for over three months now. Nevertheless, the Nvidia still has not announced the new chip formally, even though it did said at the most recent conference call with financial analysts that the new high-end chips were “ramping”.
Since three months is a long time, it is highly-likely that Nvidia already has a massive number of the new graphics boards based on the 55nm G200b/GT206 chip in stock and once they hit the market, their pricing is likely to be substantially lower than that of existing GeForce GTX 200-series boards, partly because of lower manufacturing cost, partly due to high volume of the novelties.
The original GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 graphics adapters were released commercially approximately one and a half months after the first chips were produced at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. using 65nm fabrication process.
Thinner process technologies reduce manufacturing cost, improve yields, lower power consumption or enable higher clock-speeds.
Nvidia did not comment on the news-story.
It’s an accomplished fact that GT200 graphics core is updated to be 55nm. We exposed the image of GT200 yesterday, though many people are doubtful about its truth. Anyway, everything will be clear sooner or later, and we believe our readers will have their own correct judgments.
Dual-GPU designed GeForce GTX260 GX2 graphic card will be officially named as GeForce GTX295. Apparently, GeForce GTX295 is coming to regain its dominance of performance which has been grabbed by AMD Radeon HD4870X2. It will utilize two GT200 of 55nm with 216 stream processors, and probably carry on dual PCB design. As of now, the frequency and memory are not known yet.
Our source indicates that the design of GeForce GTX295 graphic cards has been finished, and its trial-production and test process will follow later. With the big day coming closer, it’s time for GTX295 card to show itself.
According to the image we have on hand, the mark of GT200b on GeForce GTX260 graphic card will change from 65nm “G200-103-A2″ to be “G200-103-B2″. The “B” means latest 55nm processing technology, and its production cycle happened during the 33rd week of this year (August 11th to 17th), only 5 weeks after G200-103-A2 which was manufactured in the 28th week. Therefore, obviously NVIDIA had prepared for a long time.
Remark: The earliest version of GeForce GTX260 utilized GT200 with 192SP, and it was marked as “G200-100-A2″.
The first of new GTX260 graphic cards will hit the market in January next year. The number of its stream processors will maintain as 216, and its memory frequency is unchanged as well. The reference and non-reference versions cards will be on sale at the same time. Thanks to application of new processor and the circuit designed by manufacturers themselves, the price will hopefully keep declining. The GTX260 card is already available at $264 at the lowest right now.
More high-end products based on G200b, including GTX280 and dual-core 260GX2 will also emerge in Jan 2009.
Since we unveiled the first image of 55nm GT200, we thought it would take longer for concrete products getting prepared. Nobody is sure whether it has NDA problem. As we estimated, GeForce GTX 260 and GTX295 based on 55nm GT200 will not be available until January next year.
New Zotac GeForce 260 Graphic Card based on NVIDIA P654 PCB design
Not all the manufacturers are capable of producing VGA cards like GeForce GTX260 of such complicated structure. Most of them tend to purchase reference cards by NVIDIA, and then put on labels of their own logo. However, friends from Zotac claims they have been prepared to manufacture the latest version of GeForce GTX260 on their own, and send us the pictures below to prove their saying. Except for the PCB is changed to be blue color, we don’t find any difference on it from reference card. So I am going to introduce them together.
The above pictures are both NVIDIA reference cards
Based on brand-new P654 reference design, the latest version of GeForce GTX260 Graphic Card utilizes 26.5CM PCB. All the 14 video memories are put on the front side of PCB, with 10 layers of PCB design. Previous P651 PCB shared by GeForce GTX260/280 was 14 layers. Previous version of GTX260’s features 3+2 phase power module (The 3 CSP sealed Volterra VT1195SF MULTIPHASE chip would be most eye-catching).
Remark by one of AIC: the difficulty in purchasing Volterra has resulted in limits to mass production.
New P654 power modules has upgraded to 4+2 phase, equipping solid-state capacitor, magnetism shield inductance and MOSFET. Where the two 6Pin are connected features a large input inductance separately. Therefore, the reduced difficulties in design will bring down the cost.
The GT200b of GeForce GTX260 will be renamed to be “G200-103-B2” instead of 65nm “G200-103-A2”. The “B” means newest 55nm processing is used. The number of its stream processors remains as 216. The video memory uses Samsung K4J52324QH-HJ1A chip. The specs are 896MB/448bit, with default frequency of 575/2000MHz and memory bandwidth of 112GB/s.
Updated GeForce 260GTX continues to use all-in-one cooler by CoolerMaster, in order to cool the chip, video memory and power module effectively. The cooler is equipped with four copper heat sinks and 80mm concave turbofan with temperature controller. The heat sinks and fins are connected together by jointing. Due to the change of circuit, design of cooler has been adjusted accordingly.
As it will not be available until Jan next year, we’re not sure about its retail price. Its frequency stays the same as 65nm’s, so there won’t be much difference in performance. But we can expect its overclocking ability and power consumption will be improved thanks to 55nm GT200. BTW: This significant AMP product from Zotac will upgrade to 0.8ns for higher default frequency.
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This card features Volterra multiphase power regulation (no more Nvidia squealing, yes!), 14 memory chips (instead of standard seven) and 55nm GT200-103-B2 chip. 14 memory chips leaves room for cards with 1.5 GB of GDDR3 memory, and if dual-bank is used, GTX260 can support 3GB memory on the single card.
NVIDIA is preparing the GeForce GTX 295 and GTX 285 cards for launch on January 8th at CES 2009. According to the official data VR-Zone has seen, GeForce GTX 295 card has dual 55nm GT200 GPUs and 1792MB GDDR3 memories on 896-bit memory interface. The rest of the specs like number of shader processors and clocks speeds are listed as TBA. As for GeForce GTX 285, it is a replacement for the current GeForce GTX 280 card with a 55nm GT200 GPU with higher clocks. Therefore, GeForce GTX 280 cards will reach EOL in a month time. As for GeForce GTX 260, Nvidia has released design kits to the card makers and you should be seeing some self-designed cards in Q1 next year.
Firstly, GeForce GTX295 VGA card will feature two GPUs of 55nm GT200. And the number of stream processors is 480 (240×2), not 216×2 as we reported. Besides, its memory bus width is 896 bit (448bitx2), and memory size is 1792MB DDR3 (896MBx2). It won’t adopt GDDR5, and its total power is 289W. GTX 295 will be launched on Jan 8th, exactly on the day when CES2009 starts.
The frequency and pricing of GeForce GTX295 are unknown yet. Judging from the above specifications, it isn’t dual-GPU GTX260 or dual-GPU GTX280. Anyway, it’s obvious that GeForce GTX295 is about to regain its performance dominance.
ah moram je imat ja je moram imat ! 😀
salu na stranu, sve zavisi kolika ce joj biti cena kod nas. Mozda se i oduprem sili 😉
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