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Interesting article about the GTX260 & 280 from the Inquirer.

theforce

theforce

theforce

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Just came across this article from the inquirer.

Nvidia GTX260 and 280 revealed
Missed targets and low yield

By Charlie Demerjian: Saturday, 24 May 2008, 5:57 PM


NVIDIA STAGED ITS regular editors' day, and once again, we were not invited. Luckily, that means we can tell you about it early.

With the usual flair of spin and statistics which almost no one questions for fear of being cut off, NV talked about two new GPUs, the GTX280 and GTX260. The 280 is the big one, the 260 is the mid range, what used to be the GTS.

The 280 has 240 stream processors and runs at a clock of 602MHz, a massive miss on what the firm intended. The processor clock runs at 1296MHz and the memory is at 1107MHz. The high-end part has 1G of GDDR3 at 512b width. This means that they are pretty much stuck offering 1G cards, not a great design choice here.

The 280 has 32ROPs and feeds them with a six and eight-pin PCIe connector. Remember NV mocking ATI over the eight-pin when the 2900 launched, and how they said they would never use it? The phrase 'hypocritical worms' come to mind, especially since it was on their roadmap at the time. This beast takes 236W max, so all those of you who bought mongo PSUs may have to reinvest if they ever get three or four-way SLI functional.

The cards are 10.5-inch parts, and each one will put out 933GFLOPS. Looks like they missed the magic teraflop number by a good margin. Remember we said they missed the clock frequencies by a lot? Here is where it must sting a bit more than usual, sorry NV, no cigar.

The smaller brother, aka low-yield, salvage part, the GTX260 is basically the same chips with 192 SPs and 896M GDDR3. If you are maths-impaired, let me point out that this equates to 24 ROPs.

The clocks are 576MHz GPU, 999MHz memory and 896MHz GDDR3 on a 448b memory interface. The power is fed by two six-pin connectors. Power consumption for this 10.5-inch board is 182W.

This may look good on paper, but the die is over 550mm, 576 according to Theo, on the usual TSMC 65nm process. If you recall, last quarter NV blamed its tanking margins on the G92 yields.

How do you fix a low yield problem? Well, in Nvidia-land, you simply add massive die area to a part so the yields go farther down. 576 / 325 = 1.77x. Hands up anyone who thinks this will help them meet the margin goals they promised? Remember, markets are closed Monday, so if you sleep in, no loss.

The 260 will be priced at $449 and go up against the ATI 770/4870 costing MUCH less. The 280 will be about 25 per cent faster and quite likely lose badly to the R700, very badly, but cost more, $600+.

As we said, it is going to be an interesting summer. µ
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Seems that we will have to see if any of this is reliable.
 
beh* said:
How do the above stats stack up against the ATI 770/4870?
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Still unsure whether the r7xx cards will have different core and shader clocks. The core clocks have been revealed as 625mhz for the 4850 and 725mhz for the 4870. And 480SP for both.

So simply extrapolating from current rv670 cards should give an idea of performance. Although, any TMU increase may help.

If the shaders have a different clock speed, performance should be better of course, theres a BIOS screen shot suggesting a speed of 900mhz for the shaders in the 4850 in the XS thread.

Looking at prices, the gtx260 will be priced higher than the 4870 and therefore one would assume it performs better.
 
That was article was posted in the other 260/280 thread,seems like its just sour grapes as he wasnt invited with the little digs he's getting in.
 
Think I prefer this article. I wouldn't take much notice of any of them at the moment, this site seems to have a lot of Nvidia reviews than ATi.



Just wait until June 17th when the newest series of GeForce GPU's launch, and you'll start asking yourself when you last witnessed such a dramatic technology improvement. If you thought the GeForce 8 series blew the 7-series out of the water, this is going to leave you in shock. That's not my own marketing spin... Benchmark Reviews is presently testing the new GeForce video card.
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The R700 is dual-GPU so it may well beat the 280? Unless the rumours of it being a dual-core are true. I'm sure the GX2 when available would destroy the R700.
 
My quess is r700 will probably be around or more powerful than the new gtx280 as it will be a dual chip solution but gtx280 should be a good bit faster than rv770. If nvidia do bring a gx2 to the table then i think ati are rumoured to be releasing there next gen technology around christmas and if thats true i think that may well be the monster card of this year.
 
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mmmmmmmmm not so sure about that tbh, I've finished Crysis and whilst I wouldn't mind going back and playing it with AA enabled thats hardly going to motivate me to spank a load of cash on a new card.

Just playing assassins creed now and it looks awesome with everything up high at 1680x1050. I guess I could try 1920x1200 but that just breaks my eyes :)
 
nvidia need to get better yields and process. ATI is getting very high yields and will be able to win on price in the mass markets as well as requiring less power/heat management etc making them the no brainer for value ssytems, if they can be close enough on performance at the high end they will pull a good number of enthusiasts away as well as with the cost/power/coolign requirement making crossfire a very attractive alternative to the expense/heat/power requirements it looks liek nvidia will have.
 
LOL!

I guess it might be because I am absolutely sick to death of losing a stack of cash on waterblocks too so I want everything to settle down a bit and for a clear winner to come through again like the 8800GTX

I bought mine maybe 6 months after launch for £300ish with the waterblock knowing it would do me a good 18 months/2 years which its getting on for now, its definitely well over a year.

Once there's a clear high end winner I'll probably pick up a second hand one just out of greed but right now I am struggling to see the need, especially seeing as I like movies full screen on my 2407 but gaming I find a bit too much (sit too close!) at 1920x1200 so 1680x1050 is fine so the card still isn't being stretched too far.
 
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