Rumour control: Is this Nvidia's GeForce 9900?

Posted at: 2:44am 14th May 2008

Leaked mechanical drawing could be GT200-based 9900 GTS and GTX

With the launch of ATI’s new Radeon HD 4000 series imminent, the cracks are beginning to show on NVIDIA’s veil of secrecy over its own next generation GPU. A mechanical drawing has been posted to the Xtreme Systems forum, purporting to show the first cards based on GT200, possibly the Geforce 9900 GTS and GTX.

The debate still rages on Xtreme Systems whether these are real drawings or not. Most of the controversy revolves around the power connectors, and the separate NVIO display chip. One card is clearly shown with a single 8-pin power connector, whilst the other has a 6-pin power connector as well. This would make one a 150W card and the other 225W. It is also questionable whether NVIDIA would still need to put its NVIO on a separate chip again (as with early GeForce 8-series cards), rather than have it integrated into the GPU.

The drawings don’t look like any current model of Nvidia graphics card. The GPU die appears to be huge, and 16 memory chips are clearly visible on the board, eight on each side, for a potential 1GB total, via a rumoured 512 bit memory interface. Two SLI connectors can also be seen. The leaked photos appear to have been created using the viewer of SolidWorks, a 3D mechanical CAD application popular with engineering designers.

That said, the jury is very much still out whether these drawings are really GT200 – or of a completely different card. However, an NVIDIA spokesperson denied the drawings were kosher, arguing that the ‘power connectors are wrong’. With an official launch rumoured for just a few weeks’ time, we could be finding out for sure sooner rather than later.