55nm products coming soon from nVIDIA

[Cookie Monster]

Supposedly.

Link

The honor of being the first product powered by 55nm G200-302 chip (a.k.a. GT206/212) went to Quadro FX 4800/5800, products that launched with a lot of fanfare earlier today.

Besides Quadro FX 4800 and 5800, the new 55nm GPU will also power GeForce GTX 270 and 290. Essentially, we?re talking about the same parts. Quadro FX 4800 is nothing more but GTX270 with double the amount of video memory, while Quadro FX 5800 is equal to GTX290, but with four times the video memory. ATI is not sleeping, as the company is preparing an RV790 part , beefed-up version of already existing RV770 chip.

G200-302 Rev A2 begun manufacturing back in September, and the first parts are now finding their way to mass manufacturing. The chip features a die size of 470mm2, 107mm2 less than the original G200 chip. This just goes to show the vast difference between 65nm and 55nm - if Nvidia had the balls to go with 55nm chip back in May, the prices of GTX260/280 parts could have been way cheaper and offer much more flexibility, but we can?t cry over spilt milk. 55nm part is here now, and it will consume much less power than is the case with the 65nm one.

The 55nm GPU consumes roughly 50% less power than it was the case with 65nm one, and this difference is more than massive. When I did quick power checks, the GTX280 at 650/1500/2200 would eat around 266W, while the default clocked GTX280 (600/1300/2200) was specc?ed at 238W.

Well, the 55nm GPU will eat around 170W at 650/1500/2200, meaning that GTX290 just got 100W of power to play with. If you?re into overclocking, you can now start dreaming about clocking those 240 shaders to 1.7-1.8 GHz range (perhaps even 2.0 if water-cooling setup is powerful enough), and achieve massive performance gains, all happening while you?re consuming less power than a stock clocked GTX280.

As far as the naming convention goes, Nvidia calls their chips NVxx (we?re at NV60 right now) or Gxx/Gxxx internally, and partners get the GT200-XXX name. But at the end of the day, the number that matters is the one on the chip.

GTX 260 and 280 both came with G200-200 and G200-300 chips, while GTX270 and 290 will feature G206-202 and G206-302 chips. Essentially, there is no difference between the two, sans the hardwired part that decides how many shaders a certain chip has. If you?re brave enough, you?ll pop the massive HIS and play around with resistors. Who knows, perhaps you can enable 240 shaders on GTX260/270? or maybe not.

In any case, we can?t wait for these new babies to show up. FX4800, FX5800, GTX270 and 290 are all coming to market very, very soon.

My personal take is that Nvidia will try to steal the limelight of official Core i7 launch on 11/17 and ship the GTX270/290 to reviewers, trying to tell them that they?re still on top. All hopes with ATI lie in the form of upcoming 4890. But still, Nvidia does not offer a compelling $199 experience and this is where ATI will take them to the cleaners.

Of course? unless you see a GTX260-216 at a completely new price point, and GTX270 costing just $50 more, dropping to $199 for Christmas. Crazy scenario, but competition brings the best for us, consumers.

UPDATE: Picture that accompanied the story did not feature GT206 chip, thus I removed it. The rest of the info is pretty valid

Points:

55nm brings
- 50% reduction in power consumption. (Sounds hard to believe tbh)
- ~470mm^2 is the die size of G206. (This is believable)
- Looks like NVIO might still be a seperate from the main GPU die.
- Clocks of 650/1500/2200 (core/shader/memory) is probably the base line for these new products.
- Same architectural specs as GT200.

Im expecting the new cards to cost $299, and $399.

edit - this coincides with fud's article about nVIDIA finally transistioing to 55nm at Q4. (Which is now i believe)

However dont forget to take this with a grain of salt. Or truck loads.

edit2 - thread title changed

 

[error8]

Already here: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...erthread=y&STARTPAGE=1

 

[Cookie Monster]

Yes i know. That was more to do with the release of the FX5800. I wanted to create a new thread discussing about the 55nm GT200s, not the FX5800.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Nvidia is creating yet another FX5800? Doesnt anyone remember the dustbuster?

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Nvidia is creating yet another FX5800? Doesnt anyone remember the dustbuster?

Yeah, I was thinking the same. What the hell is wrong with Nvidia? Are they so amazingly retarded to not be able to find another fu***** name for this card? I know it's a quadro, but even still, they should have named it different from the old FX5800.

They need a whole new crew of employees at their marketing department. The current crew has brain damage or something.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Nvidia is creating yet another FX5800? Doesnt anyone remember the dustbuster?

Yeah, I was thinking the same. What the hell is wrong with Nvidia? Are they so amazingly retarded to not be able to find another fu***** name for this card? I know it's a quadro, but even still, they should have named it different from the old FX5800.

They need a whole new crew of employees at their marketing department. The current crew has brain damage or something.

I sort of doubt the people who spend $4000. on a workstation cards care as much about things like the name of the card, the box art, and shape of the HSF, and the other "meaningful" topics we all waste our time blathering about on the forums.

If using this card will take a couple hours of development time off a project those guys probably wouldn't care if it was called the FX-ItortureSundaySchoolteachers.

Welcome 55nm GT200s- I guess Charlie and The Inquirer were wrong for the 3,274th time. Who'd have thought?

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: nRollo
Welcome 55nm GT200s- I guess Charlie and The Inquirer were wrong for the 3,274th time. Who'd have thought?

I thought it was only the 2846th time Charlie was wrong?

Anyways, if i were privvy to information regarding 55nm, I still wouldn't spill the beans due to NDA.

if Nvidia had the balls to go with 55nm chip back in May, the prices of GTX260/280 parts could have been way cheaper and offer much more flexibility

NVIDIA was doing what Intel does with their tick tock model. This is actually a good strategy because there are always risks involved in new architecture as well as die shrinks (Prescott anyone?). "Tick tock" means you do one or the other, not both at the same time. Thus, you minimize risks and costs while speeding time-to-market. Win-win, IMO.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: nRollo

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Nvidia is creating yet another FX5800? Doesnt anyone remember the dustbuster?

Yeah, I was thinking the same. What the hell is wrong with Nvidia? Are they so amazingly retarded to not be able to find another fu***** name for this card? I know it's a quadro, but even still, they should have named it different from the old FX5800.

They need a whole new crew of employees at their marketing department. The current crew has brain damage or something.

I sort of doubt the people who spend $4000. on a workstation cards care as much about things like the name of the card, the box art, and shape of the HSF, and the other "meaningful" topics we all waste our time blathering about on the forums.

If using this card will take a couple hours of development time off a project those guys probably wouldn't care if it was called the FX-ItortureSundaySchoolteachers.

Welcome 55nm GT200s- I guess Charlie and The Inquirer were wrong for the 3,274th time. Who'd have thought?

But still, is it so hard to find a name for a new videocard that is totally different from any of the old cards? They could have called it F5800 or lots of other names. But they couldn't done that, they ran out of names and used one of their old cards name. Doesn't this at least seem odd, to you?

 

[Cookie Monster]

No. The quadro line always had the FX moniker ever since the release of the Geforce FX series. They didnt run out of names either, and soon or later they were going to get to the fifth generation of the Quadro FX line. (First quadro FX was based on the Geforce FX 5800).

Unlike the geforce counterpart, the Quadro have done nVIDIA very well ever since its introduction. Theres a reason why alot of professionals prefer nVIDIA workstation cards and why nVIDIA holds the workstation market with an iron grip.

 

[thilanliyan]

As you said, 50% power reduction is hard to believe but great if it's true.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: thilan29
As you said, 50% power reduction is hard to believe but great if it's true.

Wow that would be awesome if true but of course I will take it with a grain of salt here as well until benchmarks are done on the cards. This would be cool though.