7800GT pics and specs!

I wonder how common that will be?

The X850 XT Crossfire holds up fairly well with 7800GTX SLI, although upcoming games/engines (FEAR) will likely reduce performance more with the XT than GTX in multi-gpu.

 

http://www.hardocp.com/articleprint.html?article_id=803
http://www.hothardware.com/printarticle.cfm?articleid=715

 

There's no detail yet, but Unwinder says here that the unlocking claims/results above are false. EDIT: He's modified his position to "sort of."

 

Indeed. bigz had a go in his article with no success and I can't make it work either, at least with the current version of RivaTuner.

 

Yeah, the guys at Digit-Life are saying the ps/vs unit allocations are hardcoded at assembly stage:

Perhaps the HKEPC article "simulated" 7800GT @ 24ps/8vs by downclocking a GTX?

 

Well, to bang my drum some more, all that would also argue against any "hidden" quads. If they can now hard lock them, but they *still* appear in RivaTuner as is apparently the case in GT. If they had the ability to just hide those quads/VS (which Wavey's theory would require), there would be no need to lock them while keeping them visible.

Tho I still think it possible there is some redundancy going on at a level deeper in the chip that might explain the apparently "missing" transistors. "Possible".

 

Well, there's still space in the bitfield for _something_. Who knows? Bob!!!!

I get the feeling the HKEPC benchmarks are fairy poop, too.....

 

I think of the patent Demirug dug up, and wonder if maybe they've got quints rather than quads. That would be 6 rather than 8 additional pipes, and possibly a bit of a savings on whatever control logic there is at the "quint" level to route to individual pipes --tho that would be marginal as it would also require some additional logic at the quad level to route around the redundancy.

I suppose it might come down to how large the average "bad spot" on a die is. The above would still help quite a bit on yields (I'd think), but would obviously not give you the opportunity to hoard your tiny number of perfects for a later sku.