Geforce 8600 GTS / GT have the power

It looks like that resolutions are doomed to grow. An average gamer plays on the 19 inch 1280x1024 display, some lucky ones have 1650x1080 resolutions on their big wide sceens and only a few rich ones can afford a 30 inch display and pay up to $2000 for 2650x1600 resolution. (Szerintem ez 2520x1600 akart lenni.)

The new Nvidia card will let you play at 3840 × 2400 but only at 30 Hz which is two times 1900x1200 resolution. I am not aware of any display or device that can bennefit from this Dual link DVI-I output but obviously there will be a purpouse for such a resolution. It is a cool pixel number but un cool refresh rate as you need at least 60 Hz to make your eyes feel good.

In worst case scenario it is a nice tick box feature, that you can state on the box and impress anyone.

80 nanometre can push it high

We found out that chip that use to be codenamed G84 will end up with much higher frequencies than we originally expected. G84 based Geforce 8600GTS, a top of the mainstream offer will end up clocked at 675 MHz core. We still don’t know the memory clock but we are sure that Nvidia plans to use the GDDR 3 memory with speeds higher than 1600 MHz, if not even higher.

G84 will be fastest clocked chip from Nvidia to date and the clock comes in such a high speed only thanks to the 80 nanometre marchitecture. G80 works at at default at 575 MHz but G80 is 90 nanometre, not 80 as G84.

This is very close to the limit of the technology as you can not clock 80 nanometre chips at much higher frequency than 700 Mhz. Obviously Nvidia has to think about shrinking the chip to 65 nanometre but this won’t happen anytime soon as least not that we know off.

We already said here that the launch date is April, middle of the month.