NVIDIA's Trump Card

[radar1200gs]

This is how I see it stacking up for NV40:

6800 regular - 300 core 400-500 mem, high yields, massive availability, joe average card
6800 GT (pro) - 400 core 500-600 mem, good yields, good availability, enthusiast card
6800 Ultra 450-550 core 600-800 mem, reasonable availability, insane enthusiast card

 

[reever]

6800 Ultra 450-550 core 600-800 mem, reasonable availability, insane enthusiast card

Neither those clockspeeds seem reasonable....

 

[AlphaWolf]

Why would the (p)review samples affect released clock rates? I can see the PR already - "Our best just got better." It doesn't affect the consumer negatively (unless the card can't reliably operate at the clock rates it ships with).

Gee I don't know, why would nvidia want to have dozens of websites review their product in a slower format than was really shipping? A secondary launch of a slightly faster part will generate nowhere near the interest of their primary launch.

When the reviews for r420 hit on tuesday i expect they will be compared to 6800ultras at 400 mhz, not 450 or 475. Websites and magazines will be declaring 'winners' on tuesday, I don't think you'll be seeing a lot of them saying but wait for nv40.01 or whatever. (Well maybe THG and Anand)

EDIT: have you considered that the new GT could be the "old" (previewed) Ultra?

You read any of the 6800ultra previews? Were any of them unclear about the name of the product? Every review I read had a 6800Ultra @400mhz.

Also all of the GT rumors I have seen, have been of a 350mhz 16 pipe part, not a 400.

<edit> And for the record, Nvidia has the fillrate and memory specs on their webpage.

 

[Blastman]

The problem with the NV40 is that in a couple of reviews I read, the core did not even make 450 overclocked. Raising the vcore of the GPU raises power consumption squared.

10% = 1.10 ^2 = … 21%
15% = 1.15^2 = … 32%
20%= 1.20^2 = … 44%

Unless they can come out with another stepping that runs reliably higher, or bin a few select processors -- a 450MHz core could push up the power requirements quite a bit past the 110watts the 6800U already uses. Particularly if they have to raise the vcore to get there.

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

Had a word with someone who's getting a full lineup this week... 6800, 6800 GT, 6800 Ultra (performance is in that order).

I think the Pro and the GT are equivalent in terms of where they fit into the lineup - 6800 Pro might be from a couple of AIBMs only.

6800, 6800 GT/Pro, 6800 Ultra, 6800 Uber Ultra

4/5 boards then right?

 

[digitalwanderer]

6800, 6800 GT/Pro, 6800 Ultra, 6800 Uber Ultra

4/5 boards then right?

Well, the "Uber Ultra" doesn't really exist officially or un-official yet...it's just a wild rumor. (<--Winky 'cause we all know it will exist and is coming. )

 

[radar1200gs]

The problem with the NV40 is that in a couple of reviews I read, the core did not even make 450 overclocked. Raising the vcore of the GPU raises power consumption squared.

10% = 1.10 ^2 = … 21%
15% = 1.15^2 = … 32%
20%= 1.20^2 = … 44%

Unless they can come out with another stepping that runs reliably higher, or bin a few select processors -- a 450MHz core could push up the power requirements quite a bit past the 110watts the 6800U already uses. Particularly if they have to raise the vcore to get there.

The preview boards used stepping A0. Stepping A1 already exists (and has done so since before the NDA lifted).

As for the impact of the launch, 95% of the population aren't even aware that NV40 exists yet, and won't until it actually hit the shelves.

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

This is how I see it stacking up for NV40:

6800 regular - 300 core 400-500 mem, high yields, massive availability, joe average card
6800 GT (pro) - 400 core 500-600 mem, good yields, good availability, enthusiast card
6800 Ultra 450-550 core 600-800 mem, reasonable availability, insane enthusiast card

So then you are assuming that the GT/Pro = the recently reviewed 400/550 Ultra?

The 450-550/600-800 Ultra = the recently rumored Uber Ultra? If so, when would this be available? If it is not until June or July then Nvidia will not have an Ultra for sale until then only the 6800 GT/Pro and the vanilla 6800. Is there rumors of when 600-800 or higher GDDR3 will be available?

 

[AlphaWolf]

As for the impact of the launch, 95% of the population aren't even aware that NV40 exists yet, and won't until it actually hit the shelves.

I think you will find that the target market for the $500 enthusiast boards are generally much better informed than the average buyer.

 

[PaulS]

The preview boards used stepping A0. Stepping A1 already exists (and has done so since before the NDA lifted).

They were A1.

 

[Tim Murray]

6800, 6800 GT/Pro, 6800 Ultra, 6800 Uber Ultra

4/5 boards then right?

Well, the "Uber Ultra" doesn't really exist officially or un-official yet...it's just a wild rumor. (<--Winky 'cause we all know it will exist and is coming. )

It's not a wild rumor.

Second, there's no way that we'll see anything faster than a 450/600 Uber card. RAM isn't fast enough, and core speed won't get much higher with decent yields until NV45.

 

[Sxotty]

Does that mean you are speculating that the x800 Pro is faster than the 6800U DW?

Oh most definately.

"OWN!" or "RAPE!" are more the words I'd use to compare 'em, but most definately. 8)

I am going to have to keep this quote. The 6800 owned the nv30, so if the x800 pro doubles what the 6800U brought I will be most impressed.

 

[radar1200gs]

As for the impact of the launch, 95% of the population aren't even aware that NV40 exists yet, and won't until it actually hit the shelves.

I think you will find that the target market for the $500 enthusiast boards are generally much better informed than the average buyer.

Yes, and enthusiasts are 15% of the total PC market at best.

 

[Scarlet]

I heard from a friend in Texas that R420s were being boxed up in his neightborhood and would be available for on-line purchase the day of announcement. You have to believe nV has heard the same things. So if you are nV and don't have product to sell, why not leak rumors or even announce your are going to increase the NV40 clocks? Keep some folks from buying ATI. Make of it what you will.

As for increasing the clocks, you can on almost anything, but you do it at a price: decreased stability, decreased lifetime, higher power/thermal loading.

As a rule-of-thumb, to maintain stability you increase the clocks by a fixed percentage and increase the supply voltage by the same amount. The power goes up linearly for the frequency increase and by the square for the voltage increase. The formula for dynamic power on a given IC is F*V*V*K, where F is the frequency, V is the voltage, and K is a constant representing things such as gate capacitance, etc. which are the same from chip-to-chip (for the same product).

A good bet is that 400MHz NV40 is running at 1.3V, so we can estimate that to increase the clock from 400MHz to 450MHz (a 12% increase), the voltage would have to increase by a similar amount, say to 1.45V. The power of an upclocked NV40 would increase by 40% in this example.

The price for this is a shorter lifetime - I couldn't tell you exactly how much shorter.

Also this would not be good news for what is already a pretty "hot" part. That 120W card power number may just have been blown past. I guess we will see soon enough.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Yes, and enthusiasts are 15% of the total PC market at best.

I would say way less than that. More like 2-5%.

The point being these are the people that would know about the 6800 Ultra previews, these are the people that would look at nvidia's website and see the actual specs for the card showing its fillrate and memory bandwidth. These are also, for the most part, the only people who would even consider dropping $500 on a video card.

 

[radar1200gs]

The preview boards used stepping A0. Stepping A1 already exists (and has done so since before the NDA lifted).

They were A1.

No they were not. There was one A1 card out there (the one that sparked a huge thread here).

 

[kemosabe]

As for the impact of the launch, 95% of the population aren't even aware that NV40 exists yet, and won't until it actually hit the shelves.

I think you will find that the target market for the $500 enthusiast boards are generally much better informed than the average buyer.

Yes, and enthusiasts are 15% of the total PC market at best.

Two non sequiters. The fact that 95% of the population aren't even aware that NV40 exists is irrelevant, since only hardcore gamers are going to be interested in buying such a card, and the vast majority of those will most certainly have read the launch reviews and will compare them to those of R420. And the fact that enthusiasts represent a small fraction of the PC market is also irrelevant, since they have been, and will continue to be, the target market for high-end chips like NV40, which is what is being discussed in this thread.

Edit: AlphaWolf has already made the point...

 

[Ardrid]

The preview boards used stepping A0. Stepping A1 already exists (and has done so since before the NDA lifted).

They were A1.

No they were not. There was one A1 card out there (the one that sparked a huge thread here).

Review boards were A1. The stepping you're referring to is A2:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10946&highlight=nv40

 

[overclocked]

It seem´s like a good line to me, reminding of the 4200 card. Personally i think the core and mem speeds will go up more signifantly when nV45 arrives. One thing that´s are a little funny is why the AIB vendors hasn´t
"specific" clocks. For example Sparkle lists the ultra as

Produktinfo
Codename NV40U
Transistors 222 million
Process, GPU maker 130nm, IBM
Core clock Over 400MHz
Memory 256MB GDDR3
Memory bus 256-bit
Memory clock 2 x 600MHz
PCB P210
Pipelint 16x1 or 32x0
FP operations FP16, FP32
RGMS +
RGAA 4x
DirectX DirectX 9.0c
Pixel shaders PS 3.0
Vertex shaders VS 3.0
OpenGL 1.5+ (2.0)

And reg6800

Produktinfo
Codename NV40
Transistors 222 million
Process, GPU maker 130nm, IBM
Core clock Up to 400MHz
Memory 256MB GDDR3
Memory bus 256-bit
Memory clock 2 x 550MHz
PCB P2??
Pipelint 16x1 or 32x0
FP operations FP16, FP32
RGMS +
RGAA 4x
DirectX DirectX 9.0c
Pixel shaders PS 3.0
Vertex shaders VS 3.0
OpenGL 1.5+ (2.0)

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

It seem´s like a good line to me, reminding of the 4200 card. Personally i think the core and mem speeds will go up more signifantly when nV45 arrives. One thing that´s are a little funny is why the AIB vendors hasn´t
"specific" clocks. For example Sparkle lists the ultra as

Produktinfo
Codename NV40U
Transistors 222 million
Process, GPU maker 130nm, IBM
Core clock Over 400MHz
Memory 256MB GDDR3
Memory bus 256-bit
Memory clock 2 x 600MHz
PCB P210
Pipelint 16x1 or 32x0
FP operations FP16, FP32
RGMS +
RGAA 4x
DirectX DirectX 9.0c
Pixel shaders PS 3.0
Vertex shaders VS 3.0
OpenGL 1.5+ (2.0)

And reg6800

Produktinfo
Codename NV40
Transistors 222 million
Process, GPU maker 130nm, IBM
Core clock Up to 400MHz
Memory 256MB GDDR3
Memory bus 256-bit
Memory clock 2 x 550MHz
PCB P2??
Pipelint 16x1 or 32x0
FP operations FP16, FP32
RGMS +
RGAA 4x
DirectX DirectX 9.0c
Pixel shaders PS 3.0
Vertex shaders VS 3.0
OpenGL 1.5+ (2.0)

I am showing just 400/550 speeds on this link.

http://www.dvhardware.net/article2566.html