The steady march of GPU technology continues, as details about NVIDIA's next flagship card are surfacing. While most of the information available right now is based on rumor, what is known for certain is that the next King GPU is codenamed the G92 -- and it's going to be blazingly fast.
Here are some of the rumors floating about the Internets:
- it'll offer around 1 TERRAFLOP of computational performance
- the clock speed is going to be somewhere between the 800 and 850 MHZ mark
- sticking with the nomenclature of the current generation, there'll be a 9800 GTS and GTX
- it'll be the first PCI Express 2.0 card
- looks like it'll also support a new DirectX 10.1 standard, and Open GL 3.0
- it'll have a DisplayPort connector (the new digital display interface standard)
- be built with a 65 nm fabrication process
- double precision support (floating-point 64)
- an GTX2 version might come very soon after launch (2 GPUS on one card, like a 7950 GX2)
- could be almost as twice as fast as a 8800 Ultra (as crazy as that may sound)
- might sport a gigabyte of GDDR4 memory
Keep in mind these are all rumors.
As for NVIDIA's mid-range card, it is codenamed the G98. Not much is known about it, other than it won't sport a 128-bit controller, like the somewhat underwhelming 8600 GT/GTS cards. And it also appears that NVIDIA is sticking with the plan of releasing the high-end G92 GPU in Q4 – quite possibly November – and then releasing mid-range and low-end cards in the spring.
So far, this is the best picture of the G92 that has surfaced:
ATI failed to swoop to capture market share left open by the 8600 series $135-$275 midrange. Big gaping hole in the market here. ATI's HD2600XT, HD2600PRO was also a disappointment for gamers. ATI is "supposed to" release the R670, R680 series by Spring, and R700 before 2009. I guess we'll see.
Looking forward to reading some new benchmarks!