Introducing the GeForce 8800 - Nvidia's take on the Frankenstein Monster

http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4441

http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4442

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4450

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Gentlemen, start your DirectX10 engines

DailyTech received its first looks at a GeForce 8800 production sample today, and by the looks of it, the card is a monster: at least with regard to size and power requirements.

The GeForce 8800 comes in two flavors, which we will get into more detail about over the course of the next few days. The first card, the GeForce 8800GTX, is the full blown G80 experience, measuring a little less than 11 inches in length. The GeForce 8800GTS is a cut down version of the first, and only 9 inches in length.

The marketing material included with the card claims NVIDIA requires at least a 450W power supply for a single GeForce 8800GTX, and 400W for the 8800GTS. Top tier vendors in Taiwan have already confirmed with DailyTech that GeForce 8800 cards in SLI mode will likely carry a power supply "recommendation" of 800W. NVIDIA's GeForce 7950GX2, currently the company's top performing video card, carries a recommendation of 400W to run the card in single-card mode.

NVIDIA is slated to launch both versions of the GeForce 8800 in November of this year. More details on the GeForce 8800 will be available later today on DailyTech.

Update 10/05/2006: We originally reported the GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS are 9" in length. The reference design for the 8800GTX is actually a little less than 11 inches.

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:jawdrop: :inquisitive: :help:

Better save those pennies for that electric bill! :help:

Something tells me it the GF 8800 is also going to be useful as a space heater for those cold winter months. Just pop open your PC case and let this baby work its magic!

Hmmm, lots of articles popping up, some contradicting this one ... I'll be perkier when one of the major geek websites confirms or denies ...

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Originally Posted by Spino

Something tells me it the GF 8800 is also going to be useful as a space heater for those cold winter months. Just pop open your PC case and let this baby work its magic!

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You ain't kidding. We don't heat the office here at home because the two computers and screens (at least last winter with my old 19" CRT) heated the room just fine.

The SLI version will swallow more power than my microwave...

Damnit, computer gaming is becoming more damaging to the environment than driving a pick up up and down the road for fun :help:

Huh!

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Originally Posted by doc_bean

The SLI version will swallow more power than my microwave...

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Make of it what you will, but in DX10 video hardware is not supposed to be able to have its own private conversation without the OS butting in. This implies that SLI and Crossfire will be things of the past, so you may not have to worry about fitting two of these monsters into a case ...

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Originally Posted by Lemur

Make of it what you will, but in DX10 video hardware is not supposed to be able to have its own private conversation without the OS butting in.

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Sounds bad to me for the same reason hardware RAID is preferable to software RAID. :shrug:

The more I hear about DX10, the less I like. Hopefully this backfires on M$, and more software companies switch (and contribute) to OpenGL.

Amen! (choir sings in the background). :dizzy2:

How does requiring a 450W PSU make it a "monster"? Isn't 550Wish the current standard anyhow?

Recently I had to buy a new PSU and I wanted to get one of the best on the market. My choices were between 600W and 700W. The brand I bought didn't even make any 450W versions of their newest line.

I will wait ATI to promote DX10.

I painfully want to fly the new MS FlightsimulatorX in DX10, but I'm sure it won't happen until next summer. Definitely going to wait and see what happens with the DX10 and the DX10 video cards first. I'm not paying out $600+ for a first generation new technology test card.

I think (to both save the planet and the electric bill) I will wait for the 8600 and the 8400 before I start playing with DX10. Although I don't think the Go version will take up that much power or it would be the ultimate battery drainer. Perhaps I should wait till the 8800 Go before buying my laptop...

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Originally Posted by DukeofSerbia

I will wait ATI to promote DX10.

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ATI are always behind, they will be selling there DX10 card about a week after release of DX10. Although I am wrong to say always: they had their first 9.0b card out before Nvidia.

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Originally Posted by Lemur

Hmmm, lots of articles popping up, some contradicting this one ... I'll be perkier when one of the major geek websites confirms or denies ...

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FYI, Dailytech is part of Anandtech, one of the most popular computer geekazoid tech sites on the web. Based on the articles it seems Anand and the gang already have their hands on the GF 8800 and are putting together a review which will hit the web as soon as the NDA lifts in November.

Spino, thanks for the clarificaion; I had no idea AnandTech was branching out into sub-sites. Lemur is asleep at the wheel!

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Originally Posted by Matthius Julius

ATI are always behind, they will be selling there DX10 card about a week after release of DX10. Although I am wrong to say always: they had their first 9.0b card out before Nvidia.

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Currently in higher segment ATI has better cards - they can HDR+AA which nVidia will implement in 8xxx series.

Here they are... preliminary benchmarks of the GeForce 8800GTX. Courtesy of Dailytech (news oriented subsection of Anandtech)

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4812

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Futuremark 3DMark06
Radeon X1950 XTX 7026
GeForce 8800GTX 11200

Kicking off the benchmarking festivities is 3DMark06. NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800GTX scores 59% higher than ATI’s current flagship. This isn’t too surprising as the GeForce 8800GTX has plenty of power.

Half Life 2 4xAA/16xAF 1600x1200 - FPS
Radeon X1950 XTX 60.74
GeForce 8800GTX 116.93

Quake 4 4xAA 1600x1200 - FPS
Radeon X1950 XTX 34.23
GeForce 8800GTX 65.93

Prey 4xAA/16xAF 1600x1200 - FPS
Radeon X1950 XTX 55.53
GeForce 8800GTX 88.87

Half Life 2: Lost Coast loves the GeForce 8800GTX. Here the GeForce 8800GTX is able to show significant performance gains over AMD’s ATI Radeon X1950 XTX—approximately 92%.

Quake 4 shows similar gains as Half Life 2: Lost Coast too, an approximate 92% improvement.

Prey is based on the same game engine as Quake 4. However, Prey shows smaller performance differences between the GeForce 8800GTX and ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, albeit its still 60%.

Power Consumption - Watts
Radeon X1950 XTX - Idle 184 / Load308
GeForce 8800GTX - Idle 229 / Load 321

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Conclusion? This card is ridiculously fast, ridiculously big, ridiculously power hungry and no doubt ridiculously expensive. Just to keep things on an even keel I sincerely hope that AMD/ATI's R600 chip can match or surpass this beast.

This is why I went for overkill when I purchased my power supply. I kinda knew that whatever card replaced my DX9 baby would be a power hog. Although, as they note in the article you linked, it's not as bad as they had figured it would be ...

This creates some peoblems for me, given I have a maximum of 300EUR to spend, should I wait for a mainstream GF8 series model or get a 7900GTO now? It's nice to see what the GTX can do, but I don't want to spend that much money anyway and my electrical bill was not supposed to explode either. Apart from that, I wonder how much noise the cooling systems will make?
Also I think that the first generation of DX10 cards may not run DX10 features too well so maybe go with an older card now and wait for a more developed DX10 generation?:help:

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Originally Posted by Husar

This creates some peoblems for me, given I have a maximum of 300EUR to spend, should I wait for a mainstream GF8 series model or get a 7900GTO now? It's nice to see what the GTX can do, but I don't want to spend that much money anyway and my electrical bill was not supposed to explode either. Apart from that, I wonder how much noise the cooling systems will make?
Also I think that the first generation of DX10 cards may not run DX10 features too well so maybe go with an older card now and wait for a more developed DX10 generation?:help:

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How urgent is your upgrade ?

This makes me wanna start earning money for my own custom built beast...

I have an AGP system still and recently I bought a Geforce 7800GS for around $230 to hold me up for a year or so untill I build a new PC with PCI-E and a Geforce 8 series card.

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Originally Posted by doc_bean

How urgent is your upgrade ?

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I WANT to be able to use high texture details in modern games NOW.
Well seriously, it might take one or two months until I can afford those 300EUR.

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Originally Posted by Husar

I WANT to be able to use high texture details in modern games NOW.
Well seriously, it might take one or two months until I can afford those 300EUR.

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Well, by that time the current gen will be rather cheap. I just got a 7950GT and it 'only' costs 300€. Runs FEAR (Extraction point demo) on 1280x960 with pretty much everything (meaning everything i could find) on.

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Originally Posted by Beirut

I painfully want to fly the new MS FlightsimulatorX in DX10, but I'm sure it won't happen until next summer. Definitely going to wait and see what happens with the DX10 and the DX10 video cards first. I'm not paying out $600+ for a first generation new technology test card.

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And that is the most truthful statement yet.

Gentlemen, flybys requests are not cleared, the pattern...IS FULL, until a couple of generation of cards come out. (vague TOP GUN reference there:beam:)

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Originally Posted by AussieGiant

(vague TOP GUN reference there:beam:)

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Son, your ego is writing checks your body can't cash. You've been busted, you lost your qualifications as section leader three times, put in hack twice by me, with a history of high speed passes over five air control towers, and one admiral's daughter!

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Originally Posted by doc_bean

Well, by that time the current gen will be rather cheap. I just got a 7950GT and it 'only' costs 300€. Runs FEAR (Extraction point demo) on 1280x960 with pretty much everything (meaning everything i could find) on.

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Well, where I looked, the 7900GTO was only 20 EUR more and has 650MHz Chip frequency while the 7950GT has 550 so I guess the 7900GTO is the better choice.

I fear those 8600GTs or so will be not much faster or even slower and/or require more speed, given that they will come anytime soon.

(Warning -- contains un-Orgish language.)

(Link deleted. Sorry, too many F-bombs - Beirut)

Hah! Nvidia initiates recall of all 8800GTX cards!

http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=4253

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We have received news that all the 8800GTX cards out in the channel are being recalled due to manufacturing defect. We heard it is probably due to a resistor controlling 2D/3D switching and that leads to 3D corruption. However, the defect doesn't affect the 8800GTS cards. This issue probably could delay the launch, if not, there could be no availability of 8800GTX cards at launch but just GTS.

Update #1 : No affect on launch date as yet
Update #2 : NVIDIA will handle the necessary hardware changes (changing of resistors)
Update #3 : Only some 8800GTX cards are affected due to wrong resistor value by a contract manufacturer but to be safe, all the card makers are recalling their cards

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Originally Posted by Lemur

(Warning -- contains un-Orgish language.)

(Link deleted. Sorry, too many F-bombs - Beirut)

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Looks like Lemur went a Top Gun quote too far! :oops:

Well my BFG 8800GTX is on order from Tiger Direct (USA) and should hopefully be here in a couple of days... I will update you all on it then (and whether or not it arrives)...

HardOCP has a nice review...

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==

As for the discussion of ATI vs Nvidia I was considering waiting as ATI have prior experince with the DX10 technology... The 360 uses a varient of it and the ATI chip in the 360 shares a lot of features you would expect to see in a DX10 chip...

But the availablity and the reviews of the 8800 pushed me that way, plus I have always been more than happy with my Nvidia cards (no what I can say for all the ATI cards I have had)...

The 9700 from Nvidia is a interesting point... ATI was, for DX9, exactly where Nvidia is for DX10 today... The 9700 was a great success possibley due to a lot of the development of the early DX9 games being done testing specifcally on that card...

At least the video card market is getting interesting again like the CPU one and it not still a rush for max horsepower...

I have picked up the 8800GTX as much for the improvment to things available now as to DX10 capatability next year...