Next G80 product in February?

most likely mid range

 

You'd expect there to be a 384-bit GTO or whatever eventually, with 7 clusters enabled instead of 6 like on the GTS, but also with slower memory than on the GTX. The GTS basically has nearly 1/4th of the die disabled for redundancy and lower clock speeds; I'm not sure they could more functional dies by disabling more than that!

Now, another thing they could do for yields this generation is disabling triangle setup, rasterization, part of ROPs etc. and sell it as a Physics/CUDA-only card. Clearly, they're aiming at that sooner rather than later, and the third slot on 680i (and fourth on the 680a!) is clearly hinting at that. I think the fourth slot on 680a might be very interesting in fact; imagine CUDA guys making clusters with four $299 or $399 GPUs on a single motherboard. There'd be clear benefits for everyone there.

Anyway, I think the dynamics here is that larger die sizes aren't going to help much in segments where you're bandwidth limited. G72 and G73 are there to stay for a while, although I'm sure they'll get replaced by H2 2007 anyway. But G71 is bound to go away faster imo, and it'll get replaced by a midrange G8x rather fast. Good evidence of that strategy can be seen in NVIDIA's upcoming shrinks. They'll be shrink the 77mm2 low-end part to 65nm first, for example. I ponder if this chip is going to have a 64-bit or 32-bit memory bus, on that note... Clearly, it looks like its only goal is to have Vista Premium compliance for OEMs with a discrete card and 512MiB of memory, instead of 1GiB dual-channel. Same for the 32-bits memory bus RV505 SKU, imo.


Uttar

 

I am not an expert. But if I am not wrong now GDDR3 are the "cheap and common" ones and GDDR4 are the "expensive and rare" ones. But could Nvidia assemble an 8800GT or 8800GS with "defective" GPUs scales for 94 streams and 256 bus with the "defective" slow GDDR4???? Or I just drink too much

 

Sorry. I seems I drink too much

 

I would think that nVidia's plan is to go aggressively at the "mid-range." Given ATI knows it's losing sales at that point, AND there's a reason to have a Dx10 answer around that pricepoint, an early attack by ATI could cut nV off. And if NV isn't worried about that, they're loopy As much as y'all would like to see double-clocked, 65nm, 256 pipelines with a 1G dataroute to external memory by Feb ( ), I don't think we're looking at high-end refreshes until at least the mid-range is fleshed out.

imho, anyway

 

Silly aside:
Of all names, why did they use an acronym that can easily be pronounced as "coulda"? As in "that CUDA been a great physics card"?

If I were them, I'd wait for a shrink before doing a physics card. Or even go dedicated. The chip is pretty hot and big, with an extreme access to memory, which seems a bit unbalanced to me.... If they're already getting 70% yields, it might not make sense. But if the newer 80nm yields start off a bit rough....

 

no way I could have think of "could have".
I'd rather say as in "barracuda" which is more cool

 

mid-range + low + physics?!

That would be an astonishing move, if true....

[And yes, it is supposed to be cooda -- they pronounce it in the earnings call]

 

Desktop, Workstation & IGP?

or Desktop/Workstation, Mobile & IGP

 

It would make the most sense for the next G80 version to be a mid-range part on 80nm. This would be pretty much "by the book" and I don't really see any reason for Nvidia to abandon this formula during this generation. I think it would be hard to shoe-horn a SKU in between the GTS and the GTX.

Any reason why they could not or would not want to do a mid-range DX10-class product at that time?

 

According to this piece, there are 5 new cards expected using the G80 chip:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/11/13/nvidia_preps_five_g80_gpus/

 

Mobile ("Go") and QuadroFX versions, along with maybe a GT, a GS and/or a GX2 equivalent.

 

Wasn't GT even mentioned in the drivers already?

 

A decent mobile variant will be critical for the IHVs for 1H07. Mid-range will be next focus. Given we have a good idea of G80 tech now, I'd expect extremely compelling solutions from Nvidia. Amd had better have made wise scalability choices...

 

Oh please let me be able to swap in a G80 based mobile part in my XPS. Need some more powa to drive this 1920x1200 display.

 

The Geforce Go 7900 GS had a 20W TDP (lower than a Core Duo CPU).
If, as Nvidia is saying, the performance per watt of the G8x architecture is almost 2x higher than the previous generation, isn't a 250/300MHz "Geforce Go 8800 GS" plausible ?

 

Well I honestly am not expecting any mobile parts until they move to 65nm. They have no good reason to refresh their mobile line up right now especially given the relatively longer adoption process for mobile parts. So hopefully we will see something next summer.