G80 De-Mystified; GeForce 8800GTX/GT

[Razor333]

Μπερδευτηκα το nv20 ειναι η geforce 3, νομιζα οτι ειναι η geforce 2 που δεν εχει καμια μοναδα pixel shader και αν δεν κανω λαθος καπου διαβασα οτι εχει μιση(?) ή μια μοναδα vertex shading.

[Ailuros]

Μπερδευτηκα το nv20 ειναι η geforce 3, νομιζα οτι ειναι η geforce 2 που δεν εχει καμια μοναδα pixel shader και αν δεν κανω λαθος καπου διαβασα οτι εχει μιση(?) ή μια μοναδα vertex shading.

 

To GeForce2 (NV1x) δεν είχε όντως pixel shader και είχε DX7.0 T&L unit και όχι μονάδα vertex shading. Αφού παρουσιάστηκαν οι προγραμματιζόμενες μονάδες γεωμετρίας (vertex shaders) αντικατέστησαν και τις μονάδες (fixed function) Τ&L.

[Ailuros]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=840894&postcount=600

 

[chiderboy]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4441

 

DirectX 10 compliant GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS headed your way

DailyTech received its first looks at a GeForce 8800 production sample today, and by the looks of it, the card is a monster: at least with regard to size and power requirements.

 

The GeForce 8800 comes in two flavors, which we will get into more detail about over the course of the next few days. Both cards are dual-slot PCIe cards measuring a little less than nine inches in length. The first card, the GeForce 8800GTX, is the full blown G80 experience. The GeForce 8800GTS is a cut down version of the first.

 

The marketing material included with the card claims NVIDIA requires at least a 450W power supply for a single GeForce 8800GTX, and 400W for the 8800GTS. Top tier vendors in Taiwan have already confirmed with DailyTech that GeForce 8800 cards in SLI mode will likely carry a power supply "recommendation" of 800W. NVIDIA's GeForce 7950GX2, currently the company's top performing video card, carries a recommendation of 400W to run the card in single-card mode.

 

NVIDIA is slated to launch both versions of the GeForce 8800 in November of this year. More details on the GeForce 8800 will be available later today on DailyTech.

 

--------------------------------------

 

DailyTech's hands-on with the GeForce 8800 series continues with more information about the GPU and the retail boards. The new NVIDIA graphics architecture will be fully compatible with Microsoftʼs upcoming DirectX 10 API with support for shader model 4.0, and represents the company's 8th generation GPU in the GeForce family.

 

NVIDIA has code-named G80 based products as the GeForce 8800 series. While the 7900 and 7800 series launched with GT and GTX suffixes, G80 will do away with the GT suffix. Instead, NVIDIA has revived the GTS suffix for its second fastest graphics product—a suffix that hasnʼt been used since the GeForce 2 days.

 

NVIDIAʼs GeForce 8800GTX will be the flagship product. The core clock will be factory clocked at 575 MHz. All GeForce 8800GTX cards will be equipped with 768MB of GDDR3 memory, to be clocked at 900 MHz. The GeForce 8800GTX will also have a 384-bit memory interface and deliver 86GB/second of memory bandwidth. GeForce 8800GTX graphics cards are equipped with 128 unified shaders clocked at 1350 MHz. The theoretical texture fill-rate is around 38.4 billion pixels per second.

 

Slotted right below the GeForce 8800GTX is the slightly cut-down GeForce 8800GTS. These graphics cards will have a G80 GPU clocked at a slower 500 MHz. The memory configuration for GeForce 8800GTS cards slightly differ from the GeForce 8800GTX. GeForce 8800GTS cards will be equipped with 640MB of GDDR3 graphics memory clocked at 900 MHz. The memory interface is reduced to 320-bit and overall memory bandwidth is 64GB/second. There will be fewer unified shaders with GeForce 8800GTS graphics cards. 96 unified shaders clocked at 1200 MHz are available on GeForce 8800GTS graphics cards.

 

Additionally GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS products are HDCP compliant with support for dual dual-link DVI, VIVO and HDTV outputs. All cards will have dual-slot coolers too. Expect GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS products to launch the second week of November 2006. This will be a hard launch as most manufacturers should have boards ready now.

[chiderboy]

More G80 features abound

As if we mere mortals needed more reasons to be excited about G80, here are a couple more tidbits: 128-bit high dynamic-range and antialiasing with 16X sampling.

 

The high dynamic-range (HDR) engine found in GeForce 7950 and Radeon series graphics cards is technically a 64-bit rendering. This new HDR approach comes from a file format developed by Industrial Light and Magic (the LucasFilm guys). In a nutshell, we will have 128-bit floating point HDR as soon as applications adopt code to use it. OpenEXR's features include:

 

* Higher dynamic range and color precision than existing 8- and 10-bit image file formats.

* Support for 16-bit floating-point, 32-bit floating-point, and 32-bit integer pixels. The 16-bit floating-point format, called "half", is compatible with the half data type in NVIDIA's Cg graphics language and is supported natively on their new GeForce FX and Quadro FX 3D graphics solutions.

* Multiple lossless image compression algorithms. Some of the included codecs can achieve 2:1 lossless compression ratios on images with film grain.

* Extensibility. New compression codecs and image types can easily be added by extending the C++ classes included in the OpenEXR software distribution. New image attributes (strings, vectors, integers, etc.) can be added to OpenEXR image headers without affecting backward compatibility with existing OpenEXR applications.

 

NVIDIA already has 16X AA available for SLI applications. The GeForce 8800 will be the first card to feature 16X AA on a single GPU. Previous generations of GeForce cards have only been able to support 8X antialiasing in single-card configurations.

 

This new 16X AA and 128-bit HDR will be part of another new engine, similar in spirit to PureVideo and the Quantum Effects engines also featured on G80.