NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, October 29, 2007, 09:00 AM EDT

In the GPU business, like any other semiconductor technology, die size, cost and performance-per-watt are the name of the game. Performance-per-watt from a design and manufacturing perspective is important on multiple levels. Certainly, power efficient products are important to the consumer but also, generally speaking, power-efficient designs usually mean higher clock speed head-room and higher yields which, at the end of the day, drop right to bottom line profits. In terms of very complex, highly scalable processor architectures like CPUs and GPUs, bleeding-edge manufacturing processes are critical to delivering a competitive product with reasonable cost targets, power consumption and profit margins.

Today's NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT launch is an example of what it takes to bring a highly complex processor architecture to fruition in today's competitive arena. The new GeForce 8800 GT is an entirely new GPU core; well sort of. The NVIDIA G92 GPU core that is under the hood of the new GeForce 8800 GT is essentially a die-shrink and cut back of the NVIDIA's G8 architecture, with a few enhancements and optimizations. With this migration to 65nm process technology, the new GeForce 8800 GT is targeted at offering solid mid-range performance, lower power consumption and heat, along with a competitive price. As we said, complex GPUs need top notch manufacturing processes to be competitive in this game. Let's have a look at the way NVIDIA thinks it was meant to be played.

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Tags: Nvidia, GeForce, force, GT, id

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com