There have been rumours flying all across hardware websites and forums about Nvidia’s upcoming 9800 series graphics cards. Most are saying we can expect to be seeing them some time in November 2007, which makes sense for Nvidia’s usual product cycle. However there have also been some who claim to have info leaked from an insider within the company with much more detailed specs. While in no way official, the specs are nevertheless very interesting.
Unlike previously expected the codename for Nvidia's next generation GPU will NOT be "G90" but instead be "G92". G92 will be released in November 2007 timeframe in the form of “GeForce 9800″ series.
"G92" GeForce 9800 GTX specs.
- 65nm process technology at TSMC.
- Over one billion transistors.
- Second Generation Unified Shader Architecture.
- Double precsion support (FP64).
- GPGPU native.
- Over one TeraFLOPS of shader processing power.
- MADD+ADD configuration for the shader untis (2+1 FLOPS=3 FLOPS per ALU)
- Fully Scalar design.
- 512-bit memory interface.
- 1024MB GDDR4 graphics memory.
- DirectX 10.1 support.
- OpenGL 3.0 Support.
- eDRAM die for "FREE 4xAA".
- Built in Audio Chip.
- Built in tesselation unit (in the graphics core)
- Improved AA and AF quality levels
From what I have heard, the clock speed is going to be somewhere between the 800 and 850 MHZ mark and it'll be the first PCI Express 2.0 card. Also, a GTX2 version might come very soon after launch (2 GPUS on one card, like a 7950 GX2).
65nm process will allow for better yields and better power consumption. Power consumption will be lower than that of a GeForce 8800 GTX. GeForce 9800 GTX will be over two times faster than a GeForce 8800 Ultra in real world games and applications.
Release date : November 2007. There will be TWO products at launch: The flagship GeForce 9800 GTX and the second fastest GeForce 9800 GTS.
- price for the GeForce 9800 GTX will be 549-649 USD.
- price for the GeForce 9800 GTS will be 399-449 USD.
As for NVIDIA's mid-range card, it is codenamed the G98. Not much is known about it, other than it won't sport a 128-bit controller, like the somewhat underwhelming 8600 GT/GTS cards. And it also appears that NVIDIA is sticking with the plan of releasing the high-end G92 GPU in Q4 – quite possibly November – and then releasing mid-range and low-end cards in the spring.
The above was taken from websites with information about the Nvidia 9800.
