GeForce 8800's Showing Up All Over

Posted By: Michael Thomas - 01:25:41 Wed, October 25, 2006

The launch of nVidia's new 8800 series GeForce's isn't until November 8th but images of the cards are starting to show up all over the place. In the pics we see a new dual-SLi connector (much like the CrossFire connector on the X1950 Pro) and the final painted up version of that big cooler. The dual power connections are still present on the GTX model, and there appears to be at least one version of the board (presumably the GTS) that only has one connector, and a somewhat smaller PCB. There's also a shot of the board without the cooler attached revealing an absolutely massive chip with a heatspreader, and a smaller chip whose function isn't yet known (or at least I personally don't know). Here are all the links I've noticed thus far:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=78819

http://www.tomshw.it/articles/20061024/8800%20GTS_7_PhbEyYpicNQ3_c.jpg

And oh yeah, did I mention GDDR4?

UPDATE:

Gigabyte has pages up for their 8800s, thought not to many details are currently present:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/VGA/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2399

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/VGA/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2400

UPDATE The 2nd Coming! By Steve:

Here are some nice shots of the Asus 8800 GTX:

http://xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20061023142704.html

5 Comments

Wednesday, October 25, 2006 2:02:20 PM

Nick
guest

I think graphics technology has reached a limit to some extent. 256-bit 128-bit? Having two cards glued together like the 7950?? Surely there is no need to carry on!?! Surely the 7950 or the x1950 is enough to play any game or program that could ever get thrown at it??? Maybe ATI will have a come back with a dual core GPU especially since they've just merged with AMD. Check out their new website. http://ati.amd.com/

Wednesday, October 25, 2006 8:25:10 PM

David
guest

Nah gpu tech is just starting to evolve in my opinion.

Friday, October 27, 2006 12:52:31 AM

I do believe the smaller chip has to do with the shaders.

Friday, October 27, 2006 6:04:12 AM

Matt
guest

Yeah, it is just evolving. I mean... these are the next generation of graphic processors, and I'm reminded of the raedon X**** series every time I see them... Heavy, huge.. possibly heat problems :P.

But yeah, welcome to DX10 and graphics to die for.

Sunday, October 29, 2006 2:10:04 PM

The extra chip is a second RAMDAC processor. "It turns out that the small chip on the Geforce 8800 cards is an Nvidia NVIO chip. It provides dual 400MHz RAMDAC and Dual - Dual Link DVI output, TV Out and HDCP. Our informative friends call the chip External Video I/O Chip or simply External RAMDAC. We don't have any idea why Nvidia needed that, as RAMDAC has been normally part of the chip for generations".

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