EMunEeE
03-19-04, 01:32 PM
First hands-on look at NV40
CeBIT 2004 Shocking power requirements
By Paul Dutton: Friday 19 March 2004, 16:33
THE INQUIRER has managed to get hold of one NV40 sample.
We agreed not to photograph what we saw, but can confirm the following.
When removing the heatsink, we noted that the NV40 GPU itself was, in comparison to what we have seen before, quite large.
However whilst our earlier information indicated that it comprised of 205 -210 million transistors, our sources currently say that what we were holding was a 175 million transistor part.
With the heatsink removed we could see that a small formed surrounding was employed to assist leveling of the heatsink.
Unlike the ill fated GeForce FX 5800 Ultra (NV30) where a heatsink on the back of the PCB could also interface with a small section of the PCB directly behind the GPU as well as the memory modules, additional circuitry in this area on the NV40 prohibits this.
Whilst a heatsink still seems necessary to assist thermal control of the new lower voltage memory modules, the heatsink on the front of the GPU will have to do all the work.
Eight 32MB video memory modules are installed – four on each side of the PCB and as we first reported from Computex in Taiwan – these are of the new GDDR3 type.
However these were not from Micron, which at that time seemed to be both ATi and Nvidia’s GDDR3 development partner. Instead, Samsung seems to be the preferred supplier of the 256MB we saw installed.
The primary shocker was that the board requires two large 4-pin power connectors as opposed to the single power connector on current high-end products.
Perhaps a lot of end-users who have been thinking that they might wait and upgrade to NV40 when it becomes available, should start saving their sheckles to upgrade to a new power supply unit as well.
One final thing, contrary to previous speculation, we think that ‘NV40’ that will come to market may be what was originally planned, as NV45 is, we’re told, the PCI Express part.
Whether that has an AGP to PCI Express bridge chip remains to be seen.
Full article (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14827)
175 mil transistors??:confused:
Two Molex Connectors?? :confused:
CeBIT 2004 Shocking power requirements
By Paul Dutton: Friday 19 March 2004, 16:33
THE INQUIRER has managed to get hold of one NV40 sample.
We agreed not to photograph what we saw, but can confirm the following.
When removing the heatsink, we noted that the NV40 GPU itself was, in comparison to what we have seen before, quite large.
However whilst our earlier information indicated that it comprised of 205 -210 million transistors, our sources currently say that what we were holding was a 175 million transistor part.
With the heatsink removed we could see that a small formed surrounding was employed to assist leveling of the heatsink.
Unlike the ill fated GeForce FX 5800 Ultra (NV30) where a heatsink on the back of the PCB could also interface with a small section of the PCB directly behind the GPU as well as the memory modules, additional circuitry in this area on the NV40 prohibits this.
Whilst a heatsink still seems necessary to assist thermal control of the new lower voltage memory modules, the heatsink on the front of the GPU will have to do all the work.
Eight 32MB video memory modules are installed – four on each side of the PCB and as we first reported from Computex in Taiwan – these are of the new GDDR3 type.
However these were not from Micron, which at that time seemed to be both ATi and Nvidia’s GDDR3 development partner. Instead, Samsung seems to be the preferred supplier of the 256MB we saw installed.
The primary shocker was that the board requires two large 4-pin power connectors as opposed to the single power connector on current high-end products.
Perhaps a lot of end-users who have been thinking that they might wait and upgrade to NV40 when it becomes available, should start saving their sheckles to upgrade to a new power supply unit as well.
One final thing, contrary to previous speculation, we think that ‘NV40’ that will come to market may be what was originally planned, as NV45 is, we’re told, the PCI Express part.
Whether that has an AGP to PCI Express bridge chip remains to be seen.
Full article (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14827)
175 mil transistors??:confused:
Two Molex Connectors?? :confused: