XFX 8800 FAMILY
* 8800 Series single slot solution*
* PCI Express(R) 2.0 support*
* 112 Stream Processors*
* NVIDIA(R) Unified architecture with GigaThread(tm) technology
* Full Microsoft(R) DirectX(R) 10 Shader Model 4.0 support.
* NVIDIA SLI(tm)-Ready
* 16x full-screen anti-aliasing
* True 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range(HDR) lighting
* NVIDIA Quantum Effects(tm) physics processing technology
* Two dual-link DVI outputs support two 2560x1600 resolution displays
* NVIDIA PureVideo(tm)technology(R)
* OpenGL(R) 2.0 support
* Nvidia ForceWare(R) Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
* Built for Microsoft(R) Windows Vista(tm)
* Also available in Factory OverClocked XT and XXX versions
Nvidia's G92 is little more than G80 in 65nm
VP2 engine, 128 scalar unitsBy Theo Valich: Wednesday, 10 October 2007, 4:17 PM
THE TIME for GeForce 8800GT is drawing near. The card will launch at the end of October, just in time for all those lovely games of November.
The GPU itself has 128 "super-scalar shader units" inside, and there have not been many changes over improving the efficiency of the design. The 8800GT will come to market with 112 units, disabling 16 units in order to get the yields as high as possible (similar to Cell CPU and its six or seven SPE out of eight ones actually manufactured in silicon). This will probably continue with future appearances of lower models, like "8800GS" (with an equal or lesser number of shader units).
This is identical to original G80, which had 128 units, and those chips that did not make the cut came to market as 8800GTS, 320 or 640MB. Now, Nvidia is getting ready to minimise the remaining G80 inventory with re-launch of 8800GTS 640MB, sporting 112 units - equal to upcoming 8800GT.
The chip itself is a 17x17mm die (289mm2), manufactured in both TSMC and UMC, with UMC order ranging between 850.000 and a million chips, depending on yield in hand. Nvidia is hoping to sell anywhere between two and three million chips ASAP, which is a hefty number for this part. Then again, with UT3 and Crysis, a new cycle will begin - so there is plenty of market interest.
Depending on partner, Nvidia is pricing G92 chip at around the $100 mark. This means partners will have a margin in the form of lowly single-digit number. The first 20,000 or so boards are reserved for a magical $199 mark, for which you will be able to buy a G92 combined with 256MB of GDDR3 memory (most likely Hynix el'cheapola GDDR3 chip, known from 8800GTS 320MB and ATI Radeon HD2900XT). For a few dollars more, (ok, around 50) 512MB GDDR4 will be your pick.
Nvidia is not officially supporting a third SKU, the 1GB card - but we learned that there is more than one partner in the chase to get the card with 1GB. These premium SKUs will probably go for between $299 and $349. This higher price will be reflected in performance, which is bound to exceed expectations.
You might ponder the question of performance, and it is a good one. As far as we have heard, there will be SKUs on the market with 256, 512 and 1024 MB of video memory, 256MB one will be locked by the lack of physical memory, 512MB will prove sufficient if you don't go overboard with resolution, 1GB will buy you peace of mind.
Of course, we're talking about performance in upcoming titles. 512MB will be a golden middle, but if you see a 8800GT with 1GB of memory, be ready to jump on it.
http://www.xfxforce.com/web/viewFeature.js...atureId=1558012
XFX 8800GT[img]http://www.xfxforce.com/images/features/static/alphadogrelaunch/card_usa_v2.jpg[img]
Graphics card manufacturer XFX has released the GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog edition, in India. Just like all the other members of the GeForce 800GT family, the Alpha Dpg also incorporates a unique thermal fansink design that enables a punch up in its core clock from the industry standard 600 MHz to 625 Mhz. This allows it up to 8 degree cooler in 3D applications.
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Given how nVidia has named its graphics cards in the past, you'd think that the GeForce 8800 GT would be a slower, less-expensive version of the $400 8800 GTS. Well, it is less expensive, with cards arriving on the shelves at $250 to $300, but it's not slower. In fact, the 8800 GT outperformed the 8800 GTS in most of our tests, effectively bringing the cost of buying a high-performance graphics card down by about $100.
The XFX GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog Edition (PV-T88P-YDD4) we tested boosts performance even more over the stock 8800 GT by running its graphics processing unit (GPU) at 670MHz (versus 600MHz for a stock GPU) and its memory at 1.95GHz (versus 1.8GHz stock). That adds about $30 to the price (you can find it for around $300 on the street), but it buys you a few additional frames per second (fps) over a stock-speed 8800 GT.
The Alpha Dog is a single-slot card, with a thin heat sink that will allow it to fit in cramped cases. Unfortunately, the smaller fan is somewhat more audible than the one included on the 8800 GTS, though it remains relatively quiet except when the GPU is really cranking. The card requires a single six-pin PCI Express (PCIe) power connector. It boasts a pair of DVI connectors, a component-video adapter, and S-Video. Though it supports High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) over DVI, there's no HDMI connector.
nVidia's 8800 GT chip is based on a 65-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process (versus the 80nm and 90nm processes used in earlier cards), resulting in a cooler, smaller chip. The 65nm process also allows some additional capabilities to fit on the chip, such as extra texturing units and hardware PureVideo 2 support for enhanced video processing. The 8800 GT Alpha Dog has 512MB of RAM. Though the memory bus is just 256 bits wide, compared to 320 bits on the 8800 GTS, the other improvements more than compensate in final performance.
The 8800 GT supports DirectX 10 (DX10); note that ATI's competing Radeon 3800 series supports the new DX10.1. DX10.1 will ship as part of the upcoming Windows Vista Service Pack 1, adding support for Shader Model 4.1 and mandating improved anti-aliasing support and some other new features. But while DX10.1 may result in slightly better visuals in the distant future, we don't expect to see titles supporting it for some time-and we'd be surprised to ever see a game require it. The 8800 GT does add support for PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0, which can double the memory bandwidth between the motherboard and card.
The 8800 GT's performance in our benchmark tests would have been impressive for a $400 card; it's spectacular for a $300 model. Our Alpha Dog card scored 123fps in our DX9 1,280x1,024 F.E.A.R. test, compared to 88fps for a 640MB 8800 GTS card. Upping the resolution to 1,920x1,200 brought the range closer, but the 8800 GT's 65fps still smoked the more-expensive 8800 GTS's 53fps. Moving to the demanding World in Conflict DX10 benchmark test (run at 1,280x1,024), the 8800 GT scored 47fps, compared to 39fps for the 8800 GTS.
Upping the resolution to 1,920x1,200 finally put the 8800 GTS back in the lead in a couple of our tests, with the 8800 GT scoring 20fps in World in Conflict and 21.8fps in Company of Heroes, compared to 22fps and 23.4fps respectively for the 8800 GTS. This slight edge for the older card at higher resolutions is likely due to its higher memory bandwidth, as a ton of data is being moved around when using anti-aliased graphics at the highest resolutions. Still, the 8800 GT had the fastest results in the Crysis demo test even at the higher resolution, turning in 36.3fps at 1,280x1,024 and 9.7fps at 1,920x1,200, compared to just 25.6fps and 8.2fps for the 8800 GTS.
On the video-playback front, the 8800 GT has the same hardware PureVideo 2 playback support that the 8600-and-earlier series cards have included, but which until now has been lacking from the 8800 series. With hardware decoding of H.264 video, you'll see less CPU usage when watching HD video compared with earlier 8800 cards.
It's a great time to be a gamer, because ATI's new Radeon HD 3850 brings good graphics performance to the under-$200 market, and nVidia's 8800 GT brings performance approaching top-end $600 cards to the under-$300 crowd. The XFX GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog Edition stands out among other 8800 GT cards not just for its faster clock speeds, but also for its double-lifetime warranty, which covers not just the original purchaser, but also anyone to whom you later sell or give the card. Plus, it comes complete with the full version of the excellent Company of Heroes, as well as a disc containing the game's DX10 patch.
VIDEO
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1...annel=537061027http://www.metacafe.com/watch/904080/xfx_g...ha_dog_edition/