NVIDIA busting out liquid-cooled GeForce 8800 in November?

As if the world of high-performance gaming graphics wasn't already out of control, NVIDIA is rumored to be working a their next-gen "G80" GeForce 8800 card, which will be liquid cooled, and purportedly chows down on 300 watts of electricity to push its pixels. The news comes our way via [H]ard|OCP, which has spy pics of the monstrosity, and DigiTimes, which pulls on their usually cadre of shady insider sources for dirt on a mid-November launch. The card is designed for DirectX 10, allowing for beefier graphics and the offloading of some CPU duties, but DigiTimes is hearing word that DirectX 10 won't be ready in time for Vista's launch (it'll instead be available for download from Windows Update at a later date), and since the new graphics API won't be available at all for previous versions of Windows, a November launch seems a pretty risky move for the GPU builder -- though we're sure the DirectX 9.0 speed gains won't be non-existant. And of course there's always the pure, unadulterated geek cred of having a liquid-cooled supercomputer dominating that PCI-E x16 slot of yours -- not even Vista can take all the fun out of that.

[Via I4U]

Read - NVIDIA launching GeForce 8800 mid-November
Read - G80 spy pics

[MaddMoose @ Oct 3rd 2006 7:42AM]

Its like people that drive $500k cars, its mostly just to say, hey look what I can afford.

[sc00tert00ter @ Oct 2nd 2006 9:21PM]

this is stupid! my 7800gt is big enough. this easily looks 25-30% bigger than 7800's
this thing is not compatible with windows xp yet they are gonna release this card 2 months before vista comes out? NVIDIA! release wen u get the card smaller than motherboard and wen it takes less power than my whole house

[HughJass @ Oct 2nd 2006 9:43PM]

This card will be compatible with Windows XP. The new DX10 cards will also run previous versions of DX, just as all cards have done in the past.

[Invid @ Oct 3rd 2006 3:21AM]

Spell check and punctuation are your friends.

[Gadget Extremest @ Oct 3rd 2006 1:34PM]

Look at the top right corner of the card, it looks like it will need TWO of those specialty graphics power plugs! That is just sickening and insane.

[EGC @ Oct 2nd 2006 9:21PM]

so i shoudnt' be buying 7900GTO afterall.

[Pinhead @ Oct 2nd 2006 9:24PM]

Wow, getting a little outrageous huh? Stock liquid cooling and 300 watts per card? I don't like trusting my components with those cheap power supplies and for two of these bad boys a 1kw psu is probably needed. And with ones that big pushing 500$ seems a little out of alot of peoples price ranges. The gfx card companies need to figure out what they're doing and make some large changes to actually make these things feasible for normal people. Even with all this the inner geek in me still wants to see what these bad boys can do.

Plus no DX10 with Vista? Wtf has microsoft been doing since XP got released? Ah yeah, releasing the patches....

[nick @ Oct 2nd 2006 9:28PM]

Why cant we see better use of power these days, it seems Video cards are going the way of most last gen Processors just getting faster and using to much power.

[michael leimon @ Oct 2nd 2006 9:28PM]

This reminds me of that 4 processor bearing voodoo 5 6000 that ended up sinking 3dfx. How could a companies engineers make the same mistake again?... oh wait, nvidia bought the now defunct 3dfx company. I understand now.

[javaflash @ Oct 2nd 2006 9:32PM]

The GPU business needs some serious innovation detour.

PERFORMANCE PER WATT, fellows!

[Robert @ Oct 2nd 2006 9:32PM]

wow i cant wait whats the diffrence with the Ati 1950? which is better is this one QUAD Core???

[bazald @ Oct 2nd 2006 10:36PM]

GPUs are already incredibly parallel. That is how they push pixels so fast.

[Robert @ Oct 2nd 2006 9:34PM]

will engadget be giving one of theese away. sign me up!!!

[herman @ Oct 2nd 2006 9:51PM]

Looks like a great piece of hardware to me. It will still work great with DX9 and it will be faster than the previous hardware just because of the increase in pipes and clocks, but of course its full features and performance (Unified Shader 4) will only be used by Vista/DX10. Also, If you look at the progression of high-end graphics cards, their size, complexity, power consumption, and heat dissipation have always been going up. Performance per watt has improved; it's just that the perfmance increase is so great that the efficiency can't keep up. This card isn't supposed to fit into the average computer and it's not supposed to be for "normal" users, because it's the high-end. There will undoubtedly be mid-range cards like the 7300 and 7600 cards with decent performance and features for the rest. PS, 3dfx did not go under just because they tried to create a monster card...

[ronh @ Oct 2nd 2006 10:03PM]

This pictures are just of a mock-up if you look at the piping for the supposed water cooling you will see that they do not lead into any kind of heat sync type apparatus.

These pictures as unofficial and the theories thereafter are just unsubstantiated rumors. Wait for Nvidia's offical statement before getting angry.

[Ian @ Oct 2nd 2006 10:16PM]

Nice job engadget, I submitted this story in hours ago earlier today from Hard OCP and I get no credit :-

[archie4oz @ Oct 2nd 2006 11:13PM]

"It will still work great with DX9 and it will be faster than the previous hardware just because of the increase in pipes and clocks, but of course its full features and performance (Unified Shader 4) will only be used by Vista/DX10."

The featureset may also be accessible via gl_nv extensions/new Cg profile as well... Traditionally new features on NV hardware have been accessible on OpenGL while waiting on DX anyways...

[nurse @ Oct 2nd 2006 11:13PM]

If you look closely at the picture, you have to ask: Why does a liquid cooled video card need a big fan on the side? You guys have been had!

[herman @ Oct 2nd 2006 11:26PM]

nurse: Do you think the water just stays cold all by itself, or that you hook it up to the your house pipes? PC water cooling = closed water circulation + radiator + airflow...

[_man1c_ @ Oct 3rd 2006 2:04AM]

im just hoping when im ready to get one my psu is big enough to handle the job. have a 550watt antec, and atm it gets the job done pretty easy running my 6800GT. although this card will eat my 6800GT like swiss cheese so im not sure atm. jeez how much power will be needed to run SLi?

*head explodes*

[Steven @ Oct 3rd 2006 8:26AM]

OMFG!

[Josh @ Oct 3rd 2006 8:50AM]

The water ports at the top of the card are for the pump. The water cooling block and the radiator are all in the single card. But the pump is separate.

[Hurin @ Oct 4th 2006 11:12AM]

Allow me to cross-post something from [H] since there seems to be a lot of misinformation going around: :)

First, it's (probably) silly to assume that this card will not work in Windows XP or that it won't sell well until Vista.

While it's not surprising that "the press" is tying this card's success to Windows Vista, I'm surprised so many otherwise technically savvy people are buying into that "logic."

If this card provides a huge improvement in performance for DX9 (XP) games, it's no more "useless" or "unwarranted" than were the last few years of releases from either ATi or NVIDIA. If it's a major improvement, it'll sell just like the last few cards that provided substantial performance leaps sold. DX10 and Vista will be irrelevant as long as this card provides substantially improved performance in DX9.

I'd expect that kind of "8800 is pointless w/out Vista" logic from PC Magazine. But not a bunch of hardware/gaming enthusiasts!

Regarding water-cooling. There are other spy pictures of this card with a standard cooler (without the water cooling unit). So, it appears to be an option that NVIDIA is considering, but everyone won't be forced into water cooling.

H

[telepheedian @ Oct 5th 2006 11:02AM]

If you look closely, you can also see that the card has the "old" style NVIDIA logo, instead of the new one they are now stamping on everything. Probably because the devs didn't care, but raises the fake factor a bit.

[John @ Oct 5th 2006 12:21PM]

Geez. Someday people are probably going to have to own their own power plant to power their computers.

[Billo @ Oct 11th 2006 4:12PM]

Is it just me or has everyone overlooked the fact that this water cooled beast needs a fan too? it looks to me like the card is not actually water cooled, if you zoom in on the pic the semi-transparent cover of the heatsink by the water pipe connectors it looks as though the two fixings are directly connected and the card is actually cooled by the fan and heatsink. This might be mockup not the real thing. If the card was water cooled it would not need the cooling fan aswell.