Rumour control: 55nm GeForce 200-series GPUs on the way

Posted at: 5:35pm 10th October 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Nvidia rumoured to be moving GeForce 200-series GPUs to 55nm process, with a new dual-GPU GX2 card in the works

Nvidia has already dabbled in the world of 55nm transistors with chips such as the GeForce 9800 GTX+, but the word is that the company has plans to shrink its GeForce 200-series GPUs to 55nm and introduce some new chips, including a new GX2 card.

Last month, an apparently leaked roadmap from Nvidia’s board partner, ELSA, showed plans to move to Nvidia's 55nm GT206 core at the beginning of 2009, with a further move to the 40nm GT212 core later on. This was further bolstered with the appearance of some photos of what’s purported to be a new GT200-series chip on the Beyond3D forums (pictured). The die measures 22mm x 22mm in the photos, and the poster (DegustatoR) claims that Nvidia told him it was a GT200-series chip, despite being much smaller than a standard GT200 chip.

Meanwhile, in an unashamed piece of Nvidia bashing, The Inquirer today posted a further rumour about the new 55nm GT206 core, saying that Nvidia is planning to use it for future GeForce GTX 270 and 290 chips, with higher clock speeds than the 260 and 280. The site claims to have got the information from a PNY price list that has since been taken down. The story also speculates that Nvidia could take advantage of the die-shrink to produce a new dual-GPU GX2 card to compete with the Radeon HD 4870 X2.

Of course, this is all very much at the rumour stage, and much of it should be taken with a particularly unhealthy handful of sodium chloride. However, the move would make sense given Nvidia’s lack of a high-end dual-GPU product at the moment.