NVIDIA GeForce 8600-Series Details Unveiled

by Anh Huynh

NVIDIA prepares its next-generation mid-range and mainstream DirectX 10 GPUs

Earlier today DailyTech received it's briefiing on NVIDIA’s upcoming GeForce 8600GTS, 8600GT and 8500GT graphics processors. NVIDIA’s GeForce 8600GTS and 8600GT are G84-based GPUs and target the mid-range markets. The lower-positioned G86-based GeForce 8500GT serves as the flagship low to mid-range graphics card.
The budget-priced trio feature full support for DirectX 10 features including pixel and vertex shader model 4.0. NVIDIA has yet to reveal the amount of shaders or shader clocks though. Nevertheless, the trio supports NVIDIA SLI and PureVideo technologies.

NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS

 

NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT

NVIDIA touts three dedicated video engines on the G84 and G86-based graphics cards for PureVideo processing. The video engines provide MPEG-2 high-definition and WMV HD video playback up to resolutions of 1080p. G84 and G86 support hardware accelerated decoding of H.264 video as well; however, NVIDIA makes no mention of VC-1 decoding. G84 and G86 also feature advanced post-processing video algorithms. Supported algorithms include spatial-temporal de-interlacing, inverse 2:2, 3:2 pull-down and 4-tap horizontal, and 5-tap vertical video scaling.
At the top of the mid-range lineup is the GeForce 8600GTS. The G84-based graphics core clocks in at 675 MHz. NVIDIA pairs the GeForce 8600GTS with 256MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 1000 MHz. The memory interfaces with the GPU via a 128-bit bus. The GeForce 8600GTS does not integrate HDCP keys on the GPU. Add-in board partners will have to purchase separate EEPROMs with HDCP keys; however, all GeForce 8600GTS-based graphics cards feature support for HDCP.
GeForce 8600GTS-based graphics cards require an eight-layer PCB. Physically, the cards measure in at 7.2 x 4.376 inches and available in full-height only. NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS graphics cards feature a PCIe x16 interface, unlike ATI’s upcoming RV630. GeForce 8600GTS-based cards still require external PCIe power. NVIDIA estimates total board power consumption at around 71-watts.
Supported video output connectors include dual dual-link DVI, VGA, SDTV and HDTV outputs, and analog video inputs. G84-based GPUs do not support a native HDMI output. Manufacturers can adapt one of the DVI-outputs for HDMI.
NVIDIA’s GeForce 8600GT is not as performance oriented as the 8600GTS. The GeForce 8600GT GPU clocks in at a more conservative 540 MHz. The memory configuration has more flexibility, letting manufacturers decide between 256MB or 128MB of GDDR3 memory. NVIDIA specifies the memory clock at 700 MHz. The GeForce 8600GT shares the same 128-bit memory interface as the 8600GTS. HDCP support on GeForce 8600GT is optional. The GPU and reference board design support the required HDCP keys EEPROM, however, the implementation is up to NVIDIA’s add-in board partners.
GeForce 8600GT-based graphics cards only require a six-layer PCB instead of the eight-layer PCB of the 8600GTS. The physical board size is also smaller too – measuring in at 6.9 x 4.376 inches. GeForce 8600GT-based cards do not require external PCIe power. NVIDIA rates the maximum board power consumption at 43-watts – 28-watts less than the 8600GTS.
The GeForce 8600GT supports similar video outputs as the 8600GTS, however, the 8600GT does not support video input features.
NVIDIA has revealed very little information on the GeForce 8500GT besides support for GDDR3 and DDR2 memory. It supports dual dual-link DVI, VGA and TV outputs as well.
Expect NVIDIA to pull the wraps off its GeForce 8600GTS, 8600GT and 8500GT next quarter in time to take on AMD’s upcoming RV630 and RV610.

(c)  www.dailytech.com

Uni.PC Tags: nVidia, GeForce, RV630, RV610, GeForce 8600 GT, GeForce 8600 GTS, GPU, DirectX 10

Nvidia G80 Vista drivers in 2006 don't materialis

DirectX 10 is 2007

WE KNEW that Nvidia and everyone else targeted DirectX10 for next year but we and dozens of G80 users are frustrated as we don’t even have buggy drivers for the new OS yet. We at least expected some beta in 2006 but this driver has been more than delayed.

Nvidia is playing stall until it's ready tactics but is getting a lot of criticis about it. People had time over the Yule break and all G80 owners can forget about Aero glass for Yule and New Year.

So what happens when you plug a G80 into a Vista system? You are forced to install standard VGA driver that will let you change the resolution to fit your native resolution of the screen and that’s it. Aero Glass won’t work and even rendering of 2D windows will be difficult.

Nvidia has really disappointed us with lack of Vista driver in 2006 but we hope that the full working version will be ready soon. Until then, ATI users can play all they want with Vista with the exception that a few things won’t work well, but every card is supported while Nvidia users can forget the super high end G80s for the time being.

I exepect that Nvidia plans to show G80 driver at CES as internally Nvidia has it for a while, but it doesn’t want to share it yet.

(c) www.theinquirer.net

Nvidia unveils nForceR 680a SLI MCP

Nvidia introduced its new nForce 680a SLI media and communications processor (MCP), designed specifically for the new AMD Quad FX Platform with Dual Socket Direct Connect Architecture.

The nForce 680a SLI MCP provides processing capabilities on a massive scale, by allowing users to harness the power of up to four GPUs, eight displays, 12 SATA hard drives, and four gigabit Ethernet connections, all from a single consumer desktop PC, according to the company.

The nForce 680a SLI MCP is a motherboard core-logic solution providing a host of technologies, which include support for Nvidia SLI multi-GPU technology, with four PCI Express slots that can be used to drive up to eight independent, high-resolution displays for extended work spaces and advanced networking and storage capabilities, including support for up to four gigabit Ethernet connections and 12 SATA hard drives for a combined eight terabytes of media storage, according to Nvidia.

Additionally, the nForce 680a SLI MCP has been architected to take advantage of the power behind the AMD Athlon 64 FX-70 series processors, allowing users to also run multiple multi-threaded, CPU-intensive applications simultaneously without compromising performance, according to the company.

[original post: www.digitimes.com]

2006: The Year in PCs and Chips

From Macs running Windows to Justice Department probes to quad-core processors: 2006 was a busy year.

Vendors in the PC and chip industries moved boldly in 2006, changing the marketplace map through mergers, recalls, layoffs, and lawsuits. Oh, and they launched some impressive new products too, keeping Moore's Law moving as they built smaller, faster chips and cooler, more efficient computers. Here, in chronological order, we share a sampling of the biggest events of the past 12 months.

Apple Releases Macs That Run on Intel Chips

In January Apple Computer sold its first Mac PCs that run on chips from Intel instead of on chips from IBM and Motorola, fulfilling a promise made in June 2005. Apple substitutes Intel's Core Duo chip for the PowerPC and G4 chips in its iMac and 15-inch MacBook Pro, soon followed by the Mac mini and 13-inch MacBook.

The move also let Apple expand from its own operating system. In April, Apple launches its Boot Camp software, enabling Intel-based Macs to run their choice of Apple's OS X or Microsoft's Windows XP.

AMD Announces ATI Acquisition

In July Advanced Micro Devices announces it would buy Canadian graphics chip vendor ATI Technologies for $5.4 billion. Integrating its processors with ATI's chip sets would allow AMD to sell platforms of integrated technologies, competitive with Intel bundles like Centrino, Viiv, and VPro, analysts say. Another effect of the merger is to leave Nvidia as the only independent graphics chip vendor in the market.

By November, Nvidia also says it will expand, paying $357 million to buy PortalPlayer, a maker of semiconductors for digital music players.

Battery Recall Begins

Dell recalls 4.1 million notebook batteries in August as a growing number of customers report they could short-circuit, causing some to overheat and catch fire. Within days, other vendors join the recall, leading to 8.1 million recalls of the lithium ion cells manufactured by Sony. Other PC vendors affected by the largest recall in consumer electronics history include Apple, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Lenovo, and Toshiba.

Intel Reorganizes, Lays Off Thousands

In September, Intel lays off 10,500 workers--about 10 percent of the workforce--as Chief Executive Paul Otellini enacts a promised reorganization that has already included the sale of its media and signaling business, the firing of 1000 executives, and the sale of its XScale smart phone chip division. Otellini blames slowing growth in the PC market when he predicts Intel's annual profits will reach only $9.3 billion for 2006, down from $12.1 billion in 2005. Analysts point out that Intel had also lost revenue by slashing prices on its chips in an effort to slow gains in market share by rival AMD.

Justice Department Investigates SRAM Market

The Department of Justice launches a probe in October of sales practices in the SRAM memory chip market, serving subpoenas to Cypress Semiconductor, Mitsubishi Electric, Samsung Electronics, Sony Electronics, and Toshiba. The investigation comes shortly after the Justice Department wins convictions and multimillion-dollar fines for price fixing in the closely related DRAM industry. By December, the Justice Department also turns its focus to graphics chips makers, demanding documents from AMD and Nvidia as part of an antitrust investigation.

Meanwhile, AMD continues another antitrust fight, continuing its long-running suit against Intel over accusations that the much larger chip-maker intimidated vendors from using AMD chips. That case is scheduled to come before a judge in April 2009.

HP Tops Dell as World's Largest PC Vendor

Hewlett-Packard overtakes Dell in October as the world's largest PC vendor, capping a year when Dell had reported a series of sagging profits and the start of an accounting investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. HP has its own problems, coping with a spying scandal on its board of directors that leads to criminal investigations and the resignation of chief executive Patricia Dunn. But Dell is unable to stop its loss of market share even when the company ends its longtime allegiance to Intel and begins selling PCs powered by chips from AMD as well. Dell Chief Executive Kevin Rollins says the company was also hurt by slashing prices in order to bolster market share, and pledges to spend $100 million to hire more sales and call-center workers.

Intel Launches Quad-Core Processors for PCs

Intel launches the first quad-core processors for mainstream desktops and servers, continuing its effort to rebound from a loss of sales to AMD. The new chips include the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 for gamers and Xeon 5300 for servers, coming just a few months after Intel launches a new family of dual-core chips including the "Conroe" Core 2 Duo for desktops and "Woodcrest" Xeon 5100 for servers.

Still, the arms race continues, as AMD emphasizes its advantage in power efficiency and pledges to launch its own quad-core processor by the second quarter of 2007, the "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron 8000 for servers.

(c) www.pcworld.com

Early AMD ATI "R600" Specs, Benchmarks Leaked

Details of AMD's next generation Radeon hit the web

Newly created site Level 505 has leaked benchmarks and specifications of AMD’s upcoming ATI R600 graphics processor. The upcoming graphics processor is expected to launch in January 2007 with an expected revision arriving in March 2007. These early specifications and launch dates line up with what DailyTech has already published and are present on ATI internal roadmaps as of workweek 49.

Preliminary specifications from Level 505 of the ATI R600 are as follows:

• 64 4-Way SIMD Unified Shaders, 128 Shader Operations/Cycle
• 32 TMUs, 16 ROPs
• 512 bit Memory Controller, full 32 bit per chip connection
• GDDR3 at 900 MHz clock speed (January)
• GDDR4 at 1.1 GHz clock speed (March, revised edition)
• Total bandwidth 115 GB/s on GDDR3
• Total bandwidth 140 GB/s on GDDR4
• Consumer memory support 1024 MB
• DX10 full compatibility with draft DX10.1 vendor-specific cap removal (unified programming)
• 32FP [sic] internal processing
• Hardware support for GPU clustering (any x^2 [sic] number, not limited to Dual or Quad-GPU)
• Hardware DVI-HDCP support (High Definition Copy Protocol)
• Hardware Quad-DVI output support (Limited to workstation editions)
• 230W TDP PCI-SIG compliant

This time around it appears AMD is going for a different approach by equipping the ATI R600 with less unified shaders than NVIDIA’s recently launched GeForce 8800 GTX. However, the unified shaders found on the ATI R600 can complete more shader operations per clock cycle.

Level505 claims AMD is expected to equip the ATI R600 with GDDR3 and GDDR4 memory with the GDDR3 endowed model launching in January. Memory clocks have been set at 900 MHz for GDDR3 models and 1.1 GHz for GDDR4 models. As recent as two weeks ago, ATI roadmaps had said this GDDR3 launch was canceled. These same roadmaps claim the production date for R600 is February 2007, which would be after a January 22nd launch.

Memory bandwidth of the ATI R600 is significantly higher than NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800-series. Total memory bandwidth varies from 115GB/s on GDDR3 equipped models to 140GB/s on GDDR4 equipped models.

Other notable hardware features include hardware support for quad DVI outputs, but utilizing all four outputs are limited to FireGL workstation edition cards.

There’s also integrated support for multi-GPU clustering technologies such as CrossFire too. The implementation on the ATI R600 allows any amount of ATI R600 GPUs to operate together in powers of two. Expect multi-GPU configurations with greater than two GPUs to only be available for the workstation markets though.

The published results are very promising with AMD’s ATI R600 beating out NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTX in most benchmarks. The performance delta varies from 8% up to 42% depending on the game benchmark.

When DailyTech contacted the site owner to get verification of the benchmarks, the owner replied that the benchmark screenshots could not be published due to origin-specific markers that would trace the card back to its source -- the author mentioned the card is part of the Microsoft Vista driver certification program.

If Level505's comments seem a little too pro-ATI, don't be too surprised. When asked if the site was affiliated in any way to ATI or AMD, the owner replied to DailyTech with the statement that "two staff members of ours are directly affiliated with AMD's business [development] division."

(c) www.dailytech.com

GeForce 9600 GT with passive cooling

It seems engineers of Micro-Star International intend to provide customers with all imaginable and unimaginable accelerators based on graphic processing unit GeForce 9600 GT. No other manufacturer can boast such variety of goods based on D9P chip technology.

Developers brought another modification with index N9600GT-2TD512Z to international exhibition CeBIT 2008. It has alternative double-slot passive cooling system which consists of impressive-sized radiator and four heat pipes.

This modification built on non-standard red circuit board, has 512 Mb GDDR3 memory with 156-bit interface and functions on frequencies of 650/1625/1800 MHz perfectly matching etalon numbers.

There is no approximate information about price and public release date of N9600GT-2TD512Z.

[via 3dnews.ru]

Technorati Tags: GeForce,MSI,Nvidia,PC,Video Card

First Overclocked GeForce 8800 Cards From XFX: X-Rated Speeds

As if Nvidia's GeForce 8800 cards weren't already fast enough, XFX is taking it upon themselves to be the first company to overclock them, sending them into hyperspeed territory. At the head of the pack is the 8800 GTX XXX Edition which is overclocked from 575MHz to 630MHz. Meanwhile the core clock on the 8800 GTS XXX Edition gets a kick up from 500 MHz to 550MHz. Pricing on the cards isn't out yet, but you can expect to pay a nice premium for them when they do come out. – Louis Ramirez

[original post: www.gizmodo.com]

Quick and Dirty AMD K10 Cinebench

by Kristopher Kubicki

An early AMD "Barcelona" revision gets its first non-simulated benchmark


Earlier today, AMD announced that it successfully demonstrated Barcelona across the server market. The company did not publically state how fast the processor was running, the stepping of the processor, the processor thermal envelope or the eventual ship date.

We had the opportunity to benchmark the AMD Barcelona, native quad-core on an early stepping. We only had a few minutes to test the chip, but we were able to run a quick Cinebench before we were instructed to leave.

The AMD benchmark ran on a single-socket, K10 CPU running at 1.6 GHz on NVIDIA's nForce Professional 3400 chipset. According to the system properties, the AMD system used 4GB of DDR2-667.

The most similar Intel system we could muster up on such short notice was an Intel Xeon 3220. The Xeon X3220 is clocked at 2.4 GHz, and ran on Intel's Garlow platform (Intel X38). This system property profile stated the system utilized 4GB of DDR2-800.

Cinebench completed the default benchmark in 27 seconds for the 1.6 GHz K10; 17 seconds for the Intel Xeon X3220. The Kentsfield Xeon was 58% faster with a 50% higher clock frequency for Cinebench.

Both systems ran Windows 2003 R2, 64-bit.

AMD partner engineers tell DailyTech the chip we tested was the latest revision silicon. The same engineers claim 2.0 GHz Barcelona chips are making the rounds, with 2.3 GHz already on the desktop and server roadmaps.

AMD's current guidance suggests a late July announcement for Barcelona. However, when DailyTech tracked down the individual partners named in AMD's press release, all cited "optimistic September" ship dates for motherboards.

(c) www.dailytech.com