news 28 Posted June 16, 2008 If the GPU world were a wildlife special on the National Geographic channel, the G80 processor that powers GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards would be a stunningly successful apex predator. In the nearly two years that have passed since its introduction, no other single-chip graphics solution has surpassed it. Newer GPUs have come close, shrinking similar capabilities into smaller, cooler chips, but that's about it. The G80 is still the biggest, baddest beast of its kind—a chip, as we said at the time, with "the approximate surface area of Rosie O'Donnell." After it dispatched its would-be rival, the Radeon HD 2900 XT, in an epic mismatch, AMD gave up on building high-end GPUs altogether, preferring instead to go the multi-GPU route. Meanwhile, the G80 has sired a whole range of successful offspring, from teeny little mobile chips to dual-chip monstrosities like the GeForce 9800 GX2. Of course, even the strongest predator has a limited time as king of the pride, and the G80's reign is coming to a close. Today, its true heir arrives on the scene in the form of the GT200 graphics processor powering the GeForce GTX 200-series graphics cards. Despite being built on a smaller chip fabrication process, the GT200 is even larger than the G80, and it packs nearly twice the processing power of its progenitor. This new contender isn't content with just ruling the same territory, either. Nvidia has ambitious plans to expand the GPU's processing domain beyond real-time graphics and gaming, and as the GPU computing picture becomes clearer, those plans seem increasingly viable. Join us as we dive in for a look at this formidable new processor. http://techreport.com/articles.x/14934 Thanks, Geoff ---- Geoff Gasior The Tech Report http://techreport.com -- To unsubscribe from: TR-News, just follow this link: Share this post Link to post
