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Hardware NVIDIA Preps 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS
Kristopher Kubicki (Blog) - January 16, 2007 6:45 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 51 comment(s) - last by InsaneScientis.. on Jan 20 at 2:46 AM

More GeForce 8800 derivatives make an appearance

NVIDIA has released to its partners plans to announce a 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS product.  NVIDIA's embargo date for the 8800 GTS 320MB is slated for mid-February.

The GeForce 8800 GTS is designed to reduce the cost of enthusiast-level DirectX 10.  Samsung K4J55323QG-BC12 (800MHz GDDR3 memory) has a spot market price of about $50 for 640MB.  We can reasonably expect a $25 reduction in the bill of materials for the 320MB version of the card. 

The 320MB card is one of the many G80 derivatives expected for Q1'07.  NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang confirmed the company's plans for more DirectX 10 video cards in an interview late last year.

GeForce 8800 GTS, also known as G80-100, already exists as a 640MB product.  All aspects of the 640MB card will remain the same for the 320MB derivative: 500MHz core frequency, 800MHz memory frequency and 96 stream processors.  The PCB layout and cooling will remain the same.

Other DirectX 10 GeForce cards such as G84-300 and G86-300 are expected to ship before the AMD R600 graphics card.  R600 is currently scheduled to launch at Cebit 2007 in late Q1'07.

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$25!!
By Slappi on 1/16/2007 8:26:11 PM , Rating: 1
Hmmm $400 for a 8800GTS 640mb or $375 for a 8800GTS 320mb...


...hmmm I guess I'll go with double the memory for about 1/15th the price extra.




RE: $25!!
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 1/16/2007 8:27:31 PM , Rating: 3
Well, keep in mind that' $25 on the BOM not on the MSRP.

But I sort of agree with you.


RE: $25!!
By kdog03 on 1/16/2007 8:32:55 PM , Rating: 5
Sort of?...You'd be two fry's short of a Happy Meal if you didn't.


RE: $25!!
By Furen on 1/16/2007 10:23:14 PM , Rating: 2
Just in case you guys didn't know these video cards sell at a huge premium, that's why every company under the sun is trying to get into the video card business.

While the $25 BOM drop for half the memory sounds insanely mediocre, card manufacturers would likely also take a profit-margin hit to make these more apealing, since they'd end up not being as "high-end" 'cause everyone knows less memory is bad (I'm being sarcastic here). Nvidia might also drop the price for the GPUs, if needed, so don't expect these parts to be well-priced.


RE: $25!!
By Furen on 1/16/2007 10:25:03 PM , Rating: 2
Err, I meant "Nvidia might also drop the price for the GPUs, if needed, so expect these parts to be well-priced."


RE: $25!!
By Samus on 1/17/07, Rating: -1
RE: $25!!
By Pirks on 1/17/2007 11:53:46 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
even if its $100 less for the 320mb, it isn't worth it. it loses DX10 compliance having less than 512mb memory...at least I think the base requirements for DX10 are 512mb, might be 448mb
sounds like bs from your a## unless you prove it with a link. thank you.


RE: $25!!
By Samus on 1/17/07, Rating: 0
RE: $25!!
By Sulphademus on 1/17/2007 2:44:52 PM , Rating: 3
The weird memory configurations are because of the width of the memory controller nVidia is using.

"The GTS also has only five 64-bit memory controllers with 640MB of GDDR3 memory running at 800MHz."

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2870&p=1...

also: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/08/geforce_880...


RE: $25!!
By InsaneScientist on 1/17/2007 2:53:05 PM , Rating: 4
I haven't seen anything saying that 512MB is a minimum for DX10 requirements... nor does it make any sense... It would be impossible to create midrange and low-end cards that are DX10 compliant.

Since DX10 is a big part of Vista (Aero Glass doesn't run at its full capabilities without a DX10 card), I don't think that you're going to see many people in IT departments being very happy with the idea that they would have to get a $300+ video card, just for full functionality in Vista. Nor would your average home user, who might like to play games, but doesn't want to drop that much on a video card (or 2 or 3... many people have multiple computers).

I personally fall into both those categories, and I suspect that most would just ignore it and dump DX10 (for a long while at least, probably permanently in the IT sector), along with which goes one of Vista's major selling points...
Microsoft would have shot themselves in the foot if they put that in the DX10 Specs, since that would hurt the sales of Vista.

quote:
why else do you think the cards come with such weird memory capacities and requirements? your welcome.


That's actually quite simple...

nVidia wanted more bandwidth to the Video RAM.
There are 2 ways to increase memory bandwidth:
1st (and more commonly) you can hike the clockspeed of the memory.
Your 2nd option is to increase the bus width. (High end DX9 parts all had 256-bit memory, most mid and low range cards had 128-bit memory, and some of the really low end parts had 64-bit.)
The caveat with increasing the bus width is that it requires a lot of additional circuitry, which increases the complexity of the board, and therefore the overall production cost.

Since memory can only go so fast, with the ultra high-end of this new generation, nVidia decided to take the second option; they increased the bus width. However, for whatever reason (probably the additional cost, and they likely don't need quite that much bandwidth), they didn't want to take it up to a full 512-bit bus...

384-bit for the 8800GTX and a lower (and cheaper) 320-bit for the 8800GTS

Since each GDDR3/4 chip has a 32-bit interface, to get a 284-bit interface, you need to run 12 chips in parallel (32*12=384) which is what we find on the GTX. For the GTS's 320-bit interface, we only need 10 chips (32*10=320), which, again, is what we find.

However... computers need to do most things in exponents of 2. (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc...)
Though it is not necessary to run a number of chips in parallel that is an exponent of 2 (and therefore the interface bit rate does not necesarily need to be an exponent of 2), the same is not true of memory capacities...
Each VRAM chip's capacity must be an exponent of 2.
Since that is fixed, there is no way to offset the fact that the number of chips used isn't an exponent of 2 and get the memory capacity back to a standard 512MB, 1GB or whatever.

I.E. The normal GTX and GTS use 512Mb memory chips. In the case of the GTX's 12 chips, we get 512*12/8=768MB of RAM. With the GTS's 10 chips we see 512*10/8=620MB VRAM.
The only thing that they can do is halve the capacity of the chips (again, because it must be an exponent of 2... so they can't just take off a third), in which case the GTS's 10 chips gives us 256*10/8=320 MB VRAM. Which is exactly what we see in this article.


RE: $25!!
By JCheng on 1/18/2007 11:04:17 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Since DX10 is a big part of Vista (Aero Glass doesn't run at its full capabilities without a DX10 card)


Yeah, I'm pretty positive that's not true, full glass runs on DX9. I'm sitting here with a (don't laugh) GeForce 6500 looking at full glass.

Unless there are some special glass features that Microsoft has not announced that you know of...?


RE: $25!!
By UsernameX on 1/18/2007 11:18:03 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
quote:
Since DX10 is a big part of Vista (Aero Glass doesn't run at its full capabilities without a DX10 card)


Yeah, I'm pretty positive that's not true, full glass runs on DX9. I'm sitting here with a (don't laugh) GeForce 6500 looking at full glass.

Unless there are some special glass features that Microsoft has not announced that you know of...?


I would like to know this as well. I haven't heard of any DX10 only features for windows Vista. Can someone enlighten us?


RE: $25!!
By InsaneScientist on 1/20/2007 2:46:59 AM , Rating: 2
My apologies... I look at that now, and realize that I phrased that wrong...

It's not really a huge thing (it doesn't look any better or anything; it's just a small functionality issue.)

It isn't Aero glass, per se, that doesn't function at its full capabilites, but rather the Desktop Window Manager engine (DWM).

This might not be exactly correct, it is just my best understanding of what's going on... if someone has better information, please enlighten us.
Basically, DirectX 9 cards can only process one graphical stream at a time. Since the Aero glass interface requires a constant stream of GPU acceleration, if something else that requires GPU horsepower is started on the system, Aero glass needs to shut down so that the other process can get access to the resources of the GPU. (and it does)
Most of the time you don't see this, because the majority of the things that require graphics acceleration are full screen games... there are a few things, though, that will revert Vista to the Windows Vista Basic theme.

For example, one of them is Java. If you want to check this out, install Sun's Java package (if you don't already have it.) and then load a webpage (any page) that has java embedded in it. Vista should revert to the Windows Vista Basic Theme until you close your internet browser. (I haven't actually done this with anything other than IE, but considering how the engine is supposed to work, I would assume that it's the same with Firefox, Opera, etc.)

Anyhow, DX10 allows for simultaneous processing of multiple graphics streams, allowing Vista to continue using the glass interface, while still giving the other process the resources it needs.

That's all it really is... I didn't mean to make it seem like a big deal. It's not... but there is a little bit more functionality that you get with a DX10 part over a DX9 one.

P.S. Forgive my incoherency... I'm extremely tired at the time of this post. Hopefully I got my point across.


RE: $25!!
By tigen on 1/17/2007 3:15:22 PM , Rating: 2
Why is it weird? It's just because they have two separate memory interfaces on the chip. That's not a DX10 requirement.


RE: $25!!
By SunAngel on 1/16/07, Rating: 0
RE: $25!!
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 1/16/2007 9:03:30 PM , Rating: 2
Good heads up. Fixed.


RE: $25!!
By AzureKevin on 1/16/2007 9:46:09 PM , Rating: 3
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the 320 mb version of the 8800 GTS is likely to have an MSRP of $299, making it a much more reasonable buy. Less ram isn't a big issue, since the GPU itself is a much more important aspect of a video card.


RE: $25!!
By nurbsenvi on 1/17/2007 7:46:47 AM , Rating: 2
320mb version will be $100 dollar cheaper than the 640mb version for sure.

My only concern is that would 320mb be enough to run Crysis and UT2007?

if it is enough my money is on 320mb version.






RE: $25!!
By walk2k on 1/17/2007 5:11:57 PM , Rating: 2
It's $100 retail.

320mb will be more than enough. 256 is overkill now.

No game comes even close to using that much texture memory, unless you run Doom 3 on "ultra" settings that doesn't use texture compression...