[Faite]

Found this on my rampant speculation Dell board (www.rampantspeculation.com a blog/forum that came about as the result of some unhappy Dell XPS owners who convinced Dell to offer upgrades and such on their more expensive XPS machines, these guys rock, they are working on changing Dell one customer at a time to be more upgrade and over clock friendly)

As posted on the blog: (if anyone already posted this I apologize)

Came across this today: (from “xbitlabs.com”)

By Q4 2007 (Xmas) NVIDIA will be releasing their GeForce 9800 series GPUs.
Unlike previously expected the codename for nVidia’s next generation GPU will NOT be “G90″ but instead be “G92″.

G92 will be released in November 2007 timeframe in the form of “GeForce 9800″ series.

“G92″ GeForce 9800 GTX specs.

- 65nm process technology at TSMC.
- Over one billion transistors.
- Second Generation Unified Shader Architecture.
- Double precsion support (FP64).
- GPGPU native.
- Over one TeraFLOPS of shader processing power.
- MADD+ADD configuration for the shader untis (2+1 FLOPS=3 FLOPS per ALU)
- Fully Scalar design.
- 512-bit memory interface.
- 1024MB GDDR4 graphics memory.
- DirectX 10.1 support.
- OpenGL 3.0 Support.
- eDRAM die for “FREE 4xAA”.
- built in Audio Chip.
- built in tesselation unit (in the graphics core”
- Improved AA and AF quality levels

Pros.

65nm process will allow for better yields and better power consumption. power consumption will be lower than that of a GeForce 8800 GTX.

GeForce 9800 GTX will be over two times faster than a GeForce 8800 Ultra in real world games and applcations.

Release date : November 2007. There will be TWO products at launch: The flagship GeForce 9800 GTX and the second fastest GeForce 9800 GTS.

price for the GeForce 9800 GTX will be 549-649 USD.

price for the GeForce 9800 GTS will be 399-449 USD.

[rhagz]

That info has been around for months!

They've already taped them out and manufacturers should be getting reference parts in soon. I suspect the 'real' info will be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks.

Still a lot of speculation, some are saying that one model will be a replacement for 8600's, cheaper than the GTSs but more powerful and the other model will be the super extreme, outperforming the Ultra for around GTX prices.

[Faite]

Originally Posted by rhagz

That info has been around for months!

They've already taped them out and manufacturers should be getting reference parts in soon. I suspect the 'real' info will be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks.

Still a lot of speculation, some are saying that one model will be a replacement for 8600's, cheaper than the GTSs but more powerful and the other model will be the super extreme, outperforming the Ultra for around GTX prices.

Yea, can't wait to find out. I will just wait and get the top dog for Xmas if I can convince Santa hahahaha. (I have my vays)

[rabb1t]

I still don't believe they'd make the transfer from the series 8 to the series 9 in exactly 1 year's timeframe without producing a half-gen series 8 step. It just doesn't follow what's occurred for the previous 2 generations.

I'd need to see some real specs officially released from Nvidia before I believe anything. I suppose though, if it is just a dye shrink and some minor tweaks I could see it happening though. Particularly with the DX10.1 rumors that the older cards won't be compatible with DX10.1 (which completely contradicts everything that was said on DX10 as they said any software changes would not change the hardware requirements until a full change to DX11).

But yeah, we've talked about this before. I still don't believe they would make that many changes that quickly.

[evilsofa]

I do believe the part about GDDR4, because nVidia would be nuts to release new cards without it at this point.

Also, from what little good info we've seen about DX10 performance as compared to DX9 performance, it seems to hit the current 8 series cards pretty hard, so a drastic performance boost may actually be needed for the likes of Crysis, Halo 3 and Hellgate:London.

I would not be concerned about DX10.1 at this time. Game developers will be very slow to implement it, and if they ever actually do, it will most likely be as optional feature settings on a DX10 game, with no DX10.1 exclusive games. Simple fact is that there are no DX10.1 cards yet, and there won't be for a long time (think late 2008 at least) so game developers have no incentive to develop for it. So go ahead and buy a DX10 card now, and don't wait for 10.1 cards.

[rhagz]

DX10.1 doesn't matter. All it does is make standard something that is already optional on DX10. A DX10 card can run DX10.1 as long as the developers meet the standard.

[rabb1t]

Originally Posted by evilsofa

so a drastic performance boost may actually be needed for the likes of ... Hellgate:London.

I wouldn't count on that. To my knowledge HG:L isn't going extreme on DX10 effects. I believe, like Bioshock, they are just using it for 'minor visual enhancement' here and there.

[Akuma]

Makes no sense. They should release a 8850 and/or a 8950 series.
With ATI out of the race for this generation of GPU, Nvidia isn't pushed to release the 9XXX series so early.

ATI isnt going to release a true new chip before the end of 2008, and is preparing its R700 which will be a buffed up R600, probably for the beginning of 2008.

[rhagz]

Releasing a solid 9800 now would pretty much put ATI back about 2 more years. It's win-win. I'm glad that Nvidia isn't waiting to release technology just to compete with a new ATI chip. Keep innovating, keep refining, keep progressing. That's the only way we will advance to holo-deck technology anytime soon!

[Fozzik]

My real hope is two-fold -

That the rumors are true and this card will run quieter and cooler than its predecessors...

And that the rumors are true and the performance/price will be bumped up by a factor of 2 or more.

That sort of stuff always puts a smile on my face... especially since I may be in the market for my next upgrade next summer.