Rumour control: NVIDIA’s GTX 280 pictured

Posted at: 6:18am 22nd May 2008

New images show latest GeForce to have dual power connectors, plus further specs revealed

Nvidia’s tightly controlled information ship has been springing multiple leakages in the last few weeks before its next graphics generation is launched. Latest to trickle through the hull are full pictures of what looks like the top-of-the-range GTX 280. These appear virtually identical to the 3D drawings we revealed a week ago, when we were still expecting the GT200 to be called the GeForce 9900.

The pictures clearly show 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors on the top of the PCB, capable of supplying 225W to the card, although actual power usage may not be quite so high. You can’t tell much more from the pictures, other than the massive size of the GPU. Elsewhere, the die has been measured at 576mm2, which is 75 per cent larger than G92, and still larger than the G80.

Much more detail on the card’s specification has also leaked out in the last week. The GTX 280 will allegedly have 240 stream processors, compared to the 9800 GTX’s total of 128. It will have a 512-bit memory bus, but still use 1GB of GDDR3 (while ATI will be using GDDR5 in its upcoming RV770). The cut-down GTX 260 will offer 192 stream processors, and will use a 448-bit memory bus with just 896MB of GDDR3.

NVIDIA is also claiming its next generation of stream processors will be 50 per cent faster. So if this is true both cards will be formidable powerhouses, and even be capable of bringing Crysis to its knees at top resolutions and quality settings.

Probably the biggest controversy, however, is the rumoured lack of DirectX 10.1 support, which ATI will have on its next generation. Opinions vary on the value of this – but the lack of the latest features has caused many cards to fail in the past. This may not be as big an omission as the lack of hardware Transform and Lighting in the 3dfx Voodoo 5. But it may become significant with future titles.

The images originate from www.pcpop.com via Expreview, although our Chinese is a little rusty so we can’t tell you much more about where Pcpop got the pics from…