I sold my 7800GTX for $300 three months ago, and this time has been really difficult without PC gaming. Fortunately the end of my fasting from PC gaming seems near.
Nvidia has dropped a bomb.Basically I was waiting for the R600 from ATi. The specs had been leaked and it was looking like a beast. Meanwhile Nvidia had been very secretive about their card, which is normally a really bad sign. We all expected the G80 to be good, but not nearly as brilliant as the monster that ATi had been flaunting.
The R600 was expected to launch December, but because of the merger, and the fact that Nvidia's G80's rumored specs were weak, the R600 was delayed till February to take more time.
The fact was that ATi got over confident primarly because the R600 was shaping to be a monster next gen. card, and also because the competition was so quiet. ATi like all the analysts mistook the quietness for weakness.
Turns out Nvidia threw a googlyl:
DirectX 10 compliant GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS headed your way
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 Microsoft’s 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 hasn’t been used since the GeForce 2 days.
NVIDIA’s 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.
Kudos to Nvidia for keeping a lid on this till near launch date. The current gen. cards have on average 24 shaders per task. This has 128 unified shaders! That is nuts. The fact is that no one expected the G80 to best the R600, and with a three month head start, it is certainly a big blow.
Suddenly, having one of those new processors from Intel will be a
massive advantage.
edit:
The GTX is supposedly coming at $550+ which is crazy. The GTS which is still better than anything on the market will come at $400.
