We saw this bugger
in all its liquid-cooling glory the other day, which was impressive enough, but now
NVIDIA has released the official specs for their upcoming 8800 GTX and GTS graphics cards, and we're pretty much in awe. Without further ado, the specs are as follows: the GTX measures "just under 11-inches" long, and sports a 575MHz "G80" processing core, 768MB of 900MHz GDDR3 memory, a 384-bit memory bus, for 86GB/s memory bandwidth, 128 unified shaders at 1350MHz and a 38.4 billion pixels per second theoretical fill rate. The GTS version features a "mere" 500MHz G80 core, 640MB of memory, 320-bit memory bus, for 64GB/s memory bandwidth, and 96 unified shaders, clocked at 1200MHz. The GTS edition also shaves that card length down to a more realistic 9-inches. Both cards are HDCP compliant and SLI capable, and they require 450 and 400 watt power supply units, respectively. The cards are also, of course, DirectX 10 compatible, so we should be seeing some performance gains beyond the mere horsepower gains -- which are immense in themselves. No word yet on price or exact availability, but we'd be clearing off a nice chunk of room on the credit cards for a Windows Vista Ultimate / NVIDIA 8800 combo purchase come this January, at least if you have any Windows gamer cred to maintain and/or procure.
[Via
AeroXperience]
posted Oct 6th 2006 2:54PM
wow i cant wait, engadget feel free to give them away
That's obscene, 400W for the low end?
That's a 400W power supply, not 400W just for the card.
ok this is getting pretty crazy... almost a foot long... vid card makers really suck lately, i havent seen any real innovationin a long ass time...
You're going to need a huge case to make that thing fit!
God, Watt hogs, Sheesh.
Impressive though, I hope they all submit to liquid cooling, fans just don't cut it for the gains people demand.
Its not the size, its how you use it that counts.
Why do i doubt DX10 is going to stay Vista only? I bet it doesnt take long before someone figures out how to get DX10 running on XP
anyone else notice that it has TWO Pcie power connectors on the back!?
That thing is so insane, it needs thumb screws to hold it in or else it will JUMP THE F* OUT!
Stand back!
I want that. I want 2. In SLI.
Saw this a day or two ago, but still, daaaamn. I'm all for speeding stuff up, but this is absolutely insane (in the bad way). 450W minimum? I think I'll pass, thanks.
And I can't wait to see them try and make a GeForce 8800 Go edition. :D
Yea, but can it run Crysis, and if not, then who gives a crap.
go qwad sli
go qwad sli
Why does everyone assume that simply having DX10 support means better performance?
It's just more instruction support. That's it.
It isn't a further instruction set! Its a clean break from the direct3d, while still being able to support direct3d games. Much like Windows Vista shares nothing with XP(execpt art work) while still being able to support programs designed for XP and earlier!
Size? Power? Vista? I don't need to spooge over specs that bad. pass...
Wow. Just Wow. I hope that they can keep the high end card under the $500 price point. Any higher than that and I will have to settle for the GT version.
This thing is screaming by todays standards, just imagine how much more beautiful DX10 games will look.
HAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!!!!!
Talk about power consumption
450!!!!! What the ****? I'll wait to see what sort of benchmarks it posts firts.
I just wanted to say that ive ALWAYS had 4-500W power supplies in my PCs. think about it. 2 Hard Drives, Video card, inturnal fans, DVD rom, CD burner, ect.. thats pretty basic. if you guys are managing with out a mininum of 400w I envy you. most cases come with 450w power supplies. So its not that big a deal
Okay, so this mother has a built-in liquid cooling system and draws tons of juice. Could that just be because the initial demonstration chip was done at a higher process than what the delivered card would be? If the G80 chip is at 90nm, wouldn't an 80nm or smaller process chip be able to do the same job with less heat and power consumption?
Also, along those lines, it may bode quite well for ATI that they're onboard with AMD. They may be able to leverage AMD's 65nm (and eventually smaller) process technology to generate very competetive video cards at significantly lower power and heat levels. That would put quite a crimp in nVIDIA's style.
This card is about exactly 3x more powerful than my tiny Gforce FX 5900 Ultra. Damn, I'm poor.
What I don't get is why run the cooling inside your PC? You have the perfect opportunity to run the pipes out the back of the PC to be connected to hoses there...use it! It's a double slot card with plenty of room for this. A nice large quiet pump outside the PC is 10x better than a louder smaller pump inside.
Absolutely crazy. This is one freaking fast piece of hardware, but the hottest (literally) video card that has even been released, I believe. The GTX is probably going to make the PS3 look cheap (and very inferior technologically). However, for anyone but the absolute bleeding bleeding edge'rs, the G80 only means that the 8600 GT or whatever should be coming soon.
At least in the G90 generation, Nvidia and ATI will start working on reducing heat and power requirements, since I guess graphics can't really get much better than they are now!
"The GTX is probably going to make the PS3 look cheap (and very inferior technologically)."
But, it'll likely cost around (if not more), than the PS3.
the specs on this card is better then the PS3 graphics engine. I compared the specs n this card n surpasses the PS3s graphics engine by a lot.
im getting an ATI DX10 card, due to come out early 2007 so i can wait.
the rumored specs r here about the ATI card n Nvidia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R600
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G80
n the specs so far for PS3 graphics engine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS3
scroll down tell u see a subtitle in bold called Harware Summary, then scroll down tell u see a highlighted Nvidia's GPU n Graphic Processing Unit. Really from reading it, it says that it is using a 256MB GDDR3 VRAM graphics engine from Nvidia clocked at 650 MHz, most likely this means the memory clock.
The 8800 GTX n GTS surpasses this by a lot. 768MB at 900 MHz n GTS at 640MB at 900 MHz also.
i think ATI's DX10 GPU will surpass Nvidia's 8800 GTX.
Im pretty sure this image is a fake. The air/water cooling hybrid thingy just doesnt make sense to me.
Water coolant is used to move heat from one part of the PC to another. In most cases, this means it is used to move heat from the CPU to a radiator at the back of the PC, over which air is blown to remove the heat.
Why then, does this graphics card have both a fan/radiator/heatsink AND inlets/outlets for water? The only reason I could think of is that some parts of the card are directly air cooled (e.g. the RAM and such), while the GPU chip itself is water cooled. The thing is, if youre going over to water cooling, theres no reason why you wouldnt go the whole way.
The photo we are looking at is either fake, or some mutant hybrid prototype. Its unlikely to be a production device, in my opinion.
"But, it'll likely cost around (if not more), than the PS3."
That's why I said it will make the PS3 seem cheap (cheap compared to the G80) and technologically inferior (again the PS3 compared to the G80).
WOW!!! I can't wait for the 2nd generation of these cards to come out; hopefully they will be more affordable, less power hungry and just more sane
Good card, but Vista?
No thanks.
These graphics cards makers better start spotting that people are more then happy to change to pay for nice graphics, but not all rush out and by a (DRM-filled) OS to do it.
This direct-x-10 vista only thing is going to cause Trouble.
or, and real innovation...guess thats voxal acceleration, dedicately designed physics chip, maybe dual or quad core on one card...reduced power consumption.
This is a fantastic card, but we should never kid ourselfs their isnt more that can be done.
IMHO the power demand sucks royally. CPU makers focus on lower power consumption and less heat, but look at the GPU manufacturers.
Great going. NOT.
Rivalry is a great thing!
It would be nice to see Nvidia list the top of the line card at $595 and then tout it as a cheaper card that can blow the PS3 away.
It might even swing some of the console fanboys to the PC gaming market. The way Sony is going on about it's graphical superiority these days, it's humorous to see a card already far elapsing the Ps3 in performance over a month before the Ps3 even hits the market.
Just to speak to the PS3 comments, I don't think Nvidia originally intended to undermine the PS3 at launch. They are timing their releases as if everyone was sticking to their original schedules. The PS3 was supposed to be out this past Spring, and while the 7900 has been described as a PS3 equivalent they did give Sony a wide timeframe before they surpassed the PS3's performace.
heres my estheticaly selfish and humanitarian complaint about this video card O_o
my constructive estheticaly selfish complaint is i dont like the water cooler color, its dull, and unapealing, it should be neon green with see through acrylic shaded plastic with a sexy nvidia 3d chick holdin a sword on it and have a green led in the fan (wich is hopefully ultra quiet.)
this would be sexy and futuristic! i like that!
now my power to the people complaint is that its going to be disapointingly unaffordable for mainstream users who want a nice joy ride video card like this!
store clerks tell me that since 2002 any video cards over 300$ collect dust on shelves.
that cant be good!
this new nvidia card is genial, and electronicaly bizzare yet fantastic, but its needs a more exotic look and other than that its more than likely that only 5% of the population will afford one, wich of course sucks and is dissapointing yeh
Complaining about absolute power is illogical. If you compare GFLOPS/watt or GB/sec/watt, the next GPUs are significantly more efficient than anything Intel or AMD have by a wide margin.
Don't want to burn the power? Then don't whine about your FPS.
2004-A new operating system. Cant wait to test it out
http://www.engadget.com/2004/05/05/longhorn-to-require-pcs-from-the-future/
2005-Its about time Apple uses the intel chip.
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/06/apple-goes-intel-its-true/
2006: WOW…cant wait to get my hands on these
http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/06/nvidia-g80-specs-revealed/