nVidia G(T)300 already taped out, A1 silicon in Santa Clara

[josiahsuarez]

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/5/16/nvidia-g(t)300-already-taped-out2c-a1-silicon-in-santa-clara.aspx
nVidia G(T)300 already taped out, A1 silicon in Santa Clara
5/16/2009 by: Theo Valich - Get more from this author


According to our sources, nVidia got the silicon a while ago, meaning that the chip taped out between January and March. The silicon is A1, but neither of our sources wanted to confirm is this the final silicon or will nVidia be forced to tape out A2 silicon to get production-grade yields. We heard that both ATI and nVidia have issues with TSMC's 40nm, and both companies are testing with the alternative company. If 40nm production yields don't satisfy, expect 32nm bulk silicon parts coming out of a certain Foundry with Global intentions sooner than later.

The specifications are identical to the rumored ones - given that now we have multiple sources close to the heart of the company confirming the specifications to us, we now feel comfortable and no longer consider GT300 information to be in the rumor territory.

512 cores, 512-bit memory controller, 256GB/s to 280GB/s of bandwidth on the non-overclocked parts.

BTW, to avoid any confusion about the GT300 or GeForce GTX300 series, nVidia's GT300 chip has several codenames. The GT300 silicon is destined to become a Tesla part; G300 is the desktop GeForce card, while G300GL is upcoming Quadro part. nVidia's old-timers still call the chip NV70 and if you roam in the halls of Graphzilla's Building C in Santa Clara, you might find papers with NV70 all over it. nVidia's current parts, the GeForce GTX 285 are all based on NV65 chips.

We saw how the board looks like and there are plenty of surprises coming to all the nay-sayers - expect world-wide hardware media going into a frenzy competition who will score the first picture of GT300 board. If not in the next couple of days, expect GT300 pictures coming online during Computex.

According to our sources, nVidia has no plans to show the GT300to the stockholders, analysts and the selected invited press [no, we're not in that club], but you can expect that Jen-Hsun and the rest of the exec gang will be bullish about their upcoming products.

Watch this space.

[SH64]

Will be interesting to see if the "rumor" is true!

[Bman212121]

Hell YA!!!

*Crosses fingers for Yields*

I sure hope they can get everything working soon. I'm really looking forward to this card.

[CaptNKILL]

w0000000t :dance:

I wonder what they mean by "We saw how the board looks like and there are plenty of surprises coming to all the nay-sayers".

What are the nay-sayers saying about the GT300?

...other than nay. :bleh:

[Bman212121]

Rabble Rabble.


Actually I still wonder about the whole 40nm issue thing. ATI has a card out on 40nm already. Intel does not have any 32nm parts on the market so I'm not sure how waiting for 32nm would be a better option.

[josiahsuarez]

Intel does not have any 32nm parts on the market so I'm not sure how waiting for 32nm would be a better option.

I think the part about 32nm was just a bad joke about Global Foundries and ATI

[Dreamweavernoob]

BRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING IT ON !!!!1!!11one!!!111eleven1!!11

[Toss3]

Hell YA!!!

*Crosses fingers for Yields*

I sure hope they can get everything working soon. I'm really looking forward to this card.

+1

Hoping for 7.1 LPCM via HDMI also!

[rage10]

will it have display port?

[josiahsuarez]

that's up to the board manufacturer to put in or not

[josiahsuarez]

Fuad says TSMC 40nm yields are not that bad after all

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/13792/1/
RV740 has good yields, but at 700MHz
Written by Fuad Abazovic
Thursday, 21 May 2009 08:37

Wonders of 40nm

We've learned that one of ATI's problems with 40nm RV740 yields is the target clock speeds. It is not the case that most of the GPUs comes faulty but only a limited number can meet quality requirements for a 750MHz core clock, something that ATI targets for Radeon HD 4770.


Our sources have confirmed that the new card based on RV740 is Radeon HD 4730, and that this card, clocked at 700MHz, should be widely available. With this speed, ATI should be able to outrun Geforce 9600GT 512MB but it might lose against Geforce 9800GT or come really close.

Radeon HD 4730 was meant to be limited to China and Russia, but Europe and USA will get their hand on this card. It looks that at 700MHz, RV740 40nm yields are just fine.

quite coincidental that 700mhz is what the G300 samples are rumored to run at

[Atomizer]

Our sources have confirmed that the new card based on RV740 is Radeon HD 4730, and that this card, clocked at 700MHz, should be widely available. With this speed, ATI should be able to outrun Geforce 9600GT 512MB but it might lose against Geforce 9800GT or come really close.

If thats the case, how would it be worth buying? Unless its for the below $100 market, ATI already have budget cards close to the 9800GT, but even so the 9x00s are last gen, and we are moving onto next gen soon....

[Blacklash]

It would be nice to see a single GPU capable of spanking the most demanding games @ 1920x1200 with AA. By spank I mean never having min frames lower than 30FPS. Getting average frames of 35 is pointless to me if the GPU frequently turns in 6-20FPS mins. Anything close to a 20 min = way too sluggish for my tastes.

If it's about as powerful as GTX Core 216 SLi @ 660|2200, I'll definitely consider one.

[walterman]

http://www.nordichardware.com/news,9303.html

GTX285 GTX385
GPU clock 648MHz 700MHz
Memory clock 1242MHz (2484MHz GDDR3) 1100MHz (4400MHz GDDR5)
Memory bus 512-bit 512-bit
Shader clock 1476MHz 1600 MHz
Theoretic perf. 933 Gflops 2457 Gflops
Memory bandwidth 159.0 GB/s 281.6 GB/s

Compared to NVIDIA's current single-GPU flagship GeForce GTX285 this is a total humiliation and the big question is when NVIDIA can get the card out in the open, and whether hardware-infos has a reliable source for all this.

[Revs]

Is SLI even gonna be required on these next cards? I don't think there are any games that'll push a card with so much power, at least for a while. Still, two would be nice :D.

[Bman212121]

Is SLI even gonna be required on these next cards? I don't think there are any games that'll push a card with so much power, at least for a while. Still, two would be nice :D.

Heh, that's a redundant question. It has been asked every time a new GPU is released.

3 x GTX380 OMFG WTF XXX FTW PWNSAUCE PLZ!!! :D

[TheANIMAL]

Yeah, right up until someone tries it and complains OMG i'm only getting 376fps at 3840*2160 resolution on Crysis maxed out. :crylikeababy:

[josiahsuarez]

digitimes now also says GT300 is taped out

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090520PD211/nvidia_to_increase_40nm_orders_with_tsmc_for_2009. html
Nvidia has recently completed the tape-out of its next-generation (GT300) GPU on TSMC's 40nm process, indicated the sources.

[shadow001]

Well,i'm running a Quad crossfire setup with 2 HD4870 X2's,and they're water cooled(900Mhz cores,1050 Mhz memory),so i've got no lack of graphics horsepower to say the least....Bought the cards as soon as were released last year,so it's almost a year old.


That's 150 Mhz faster than stock clocks for the GPU's,so if we play the shader power game,that gives almost 5.8 terraflops of shader power between all 4 RV770 GPU's.


Since the GT300 has 2.4 terraflops of shader power for it's GPU,you'd still need at least 2 GT300's in SLI,overclocked of course,to match the shader power i have now had under the hood for nearly a year...:D


But the sad reality is that games aren't keeping up to actually put a decent stress of these high end setups abilities,rather going multiplatform,which includes consoles,and those same consoles are now a joke compared to even a mid range PC's,as they're still running DX9 class GPU's that are now several years old.

[Atomizer]

Consoles have never been as powerful as PCs, the only one I could say that was more powerful was the PS3 with its mass core system, the only reason consoles appear to have more power is because they dont have a massive OS to put up with in the background, and with fixed hardware the devs can optimize for it making it do more.

Plus, with new hardware comes new features and unlocking other potentials, if the hardware stays ahead of the games, then we can move up in resolution for the same games, I mean, we used to be on 1024x768 and having games run poorly, and having to back down to 800x600 or even 640x480, then theres the whole 16bit->32bit thing.

However, as the hardware gets faster, the side effect is games will be made to use it, but it wont until the hardware is actually there, well, thats for the true PC devs anyway, the majority of devs, who focus on consoles wont use the hardware, we need more true PC games, and not the hybrids we have now.

[shadow001]

Consoles have never been as powerful as PCs, the only one I could say that was more powerful was the PS3 with its mass core system, the only reason consoles appear to have more power is because they dont have a massive OS to put up with in the background, and with fixed hardware the devs can optimize for it making it do more.

Plus, with new hardware comes new features and unlocking other potentials, if the hardware stays ahead of the games, then we can move up in resolution for the same games, I mean, we used to be on 1024x768 and having games run poorly, and having to back down to 800x600 or even 640x480, then theres the whole 16bit->32bit thing.

However, as the hardware gets faster, the side effect is games will be made to use it, but it wont until the hardware is actually there, well, thats for the true PC devs anyway, the majority of devs, who focus on consoles wont use the hardware, we need more true PC games, and not the hybrids we have now.


Keep in mind though,that at least when consoles are first released,they can match the specs of a pretty high end system at that point,but the console hardware will remain the same for the next 4~5 years until the next generation of consoles,are released,hopefullly using DX11 GPU's in them this time.


As for the resolutions bonuses,we're already hitting a wall there in a big way,since my setup pretty much runs every game smoothly at 2560*1600 with 2X to 4X AA on top,which is actually not really needed given the high resolutions involved and are exclusive to 30" LCD's,which not that many use them,since they're still expensive(i use one though).


Now imagine those who will use triple SLI,with GT300 based cards,or use Quad crossfire with 4 RV870's,which will obviously be much faster than my setup(or can be),but will require the use of a 30" LCD to see the largest differences,since any resolution under that,even with high levels of AA,will likely be CPU limited even with the fastest CPU's installed.


GPU's are horrendously fast these days,so speed for speeds sake,is a tougher sell if the games themselves aren't keeping up by being far more demanding,far sooner.....I'm already CPU limited in many cases with my setup,and i'm running an i7 920 at 4Ghz with hyperthreading enabled,so it acts like an 8 Core system.


What we need is Crysis 2.0,with it being 2~3X more demanding than the original....Basically games so amazing in terms of visuals,that we upgrade not just for better benchmark numbers,but to actually enhance the gameplay experience running those extremely demanding games.

[walterman]

... What we need is Crysis 2.0,with it being 2~3X more demanding than the original ...

Well, i would prefer to see an engine that runs 2-3x times faster than Crysis with the same or higher IQ.

[shadow001]

Well, i would prefer to see an engine that runs 2-3x times faster than Crysis with the same or higher IQ.


As amazing as crysis is in terms of graphics,it's already 20 months old,and i'm kinda surprised not one shipping game released after crysis,has yet managed to beat it in terms of graphics.


True,Crysis is a performance hog,especially when it was first released,but hardware now is quite a bit faster too,and will be much faster once the GT300's or RV870's are released.


Basically,performance tuning to get the best experience from a game,still matters with lower end and midrange setups,but with very high end ones,there's plenty of power to spare.

[josiahsuarez]

the problem with PCs is that not everyone owns a good high end system. the cutting edge in PC hardware just blows any console away, but no software developer is going to write a game that needs that kind of power when the potential market is so small. while with a console everyone owns the same system with the same hardware, so a developer is free to take full advantage of all the hardware capabilities without limiting their sales.

[shadow001]

the problem with PCs is that not everyone owns a good high end system. the cutting edge in PC hardware just blows any console away, but no software developer is going to write a game that needs that kind of power when the potential market is so small. while with a console everyone owns the same system with the same hardware, so a developer is free to take full advantage of all the hardware capabilities without limiting their sales.


Absolutely correct.


The flip side is how do you market ever faster GPU's like the GT300 and the RV870 in those conditions....