Richard Vanderhurst reviews the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB
By: Myles Booker | Posted: 17th July 2009
The original release of next-gen games is a bit far off. But one of the main divergences in the GeForce 8800 GTX's design lies in how we consider its pipelines. In the past, we've related a 3D chip has X quantity of pixel pipelines and Y pipes for shader calculations. To explain, no pipe is aimed toward a particular task.
This suggests that if your card is processing a shader-intensive scene, it can tap from more of the pipeline pool to process that image, rather than being capped at 24 or 48 pipes because some of the other pipes are set aside for geometry only. This capacity should give game designers much more plasticity in how they design games, knowing that if they can balance the workload properly, they can pump plenty of processing power into a given calculation.
Its transistor count sits at 681 million on a 90-nanometer manufacturing process chip. But the trick is the power supply must have two PCI Express card power connectors to plug into the two sockets on the back of the card.
Therefore, we did not get to check it, but Nvidia did share the power supply specs with us. But some of the advised models on its SLI compatibility list go as high as eight hundred and fifty and even one thousand watts.
Still, it's plain that building a next-gen SLI rig will be no tiny undertaking, at least for the moment. Heck, many midtowers PC cases are too tiny to accept a 1,000-watt power supply. With no DirectX ten games available to check on now, we can't talk to the GeForce 8800 GTX's next-generation performance, apart from the certain fact that it's the only card on the market that claims DirectX 10 compatibility.
This suggests that if your card is processing a shader-intensive scene, it can tap from more of the pipeline pool to process that image, instead of being capped at twenty-four or 48 pipes because some of the other pipes are put aside for geometry only. This capacity should give game designers much more pliability in how they design games, knowing that if they can balance the workload correctly, they can pump plenty of processing power into a given calculation.
Its transistor count sits at 681 million on a 90-nanometer producing process chip. But the trick is the power supply must have 2 PCI Express card power connectors to plug into the 2 sockets on the back of the card.
Therefore , we did not get to check it, but Nvidia did share the power supply specs with us. But some of the endorsed models on its SLI compatibility list go as high as eight hundred and fifty and even one thousand watts.
About Richard Vanderhurst
For over ten years, Richard Vanderhurst has been on the state of cyber technology developing hardware and software for Web based applications. His latest accomplishment includes understanding search engine algorithm and engineering test beds for further evaluation.
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Tags: workload, pipes, processing power, geometry, sockets, manufacturing process, rig, game designers, plasticity