Huge Nvidian 8800GT die pictured

WE HAVE TAKEN taken several 8800GT apart and checked for differences between the boards.

There isn't much to be said, other than to note that Nvidia has now marked its chips G92_2x0. This is just like G84 and G86 were marked as different series.

But the shocking thing is the fact that die is massive. This is how 65nm chip looks like when you put some real units inside, not make a chip that 80% is cache, and 20% is logic.

Big 128 112 units and a fixed video part...

The this chip is huge, but it is still smaller than a G80, which took most of the FC-BGA packaging, just like R600.

Graphzilla just placed a metal IHS covering complete package, and that is that. The lower-end part (with unexpectedly good performance) comes bare naked, and we can see the difference between die sizes.

When compared to the 8600GTS, this chip is way bigger (and better), and sure will pack the punch for DX10.0 titles.

The PCB itself is *very* similar to GeForce 8800GTS, with only minor modifications made in order to fit the 256-bit memory controller on the board.

The G80 chip comes with 384-bit memory controller, while this cheaper but highly-efficient 256-bit one is more friendly to the amount of video memory. Game devs complained about 768MB quite a lot, and we remember how 1GB XT cards walked all over Ultra in highest resolutions.

This is how the board looks once that single-slot (or dual-slot) cooler is removed:

Looking like 7950GT? You're not all that far off...

As you can see, NVIO1 chip went the way of dodo birds.

Room for additional chippery, but it is left unused this time around.

The board we have is a bare reference design, manufactured by Flextronics (as far as we can guess by the numbers). This was the base for quite a lot of boards, but we'll see who will ship most 8800GT boards in 2007 - Foxconn or Flextronics.

When it comes to rest of the board, this is what you'll be able to buy for $200 something, depending on the size of frame buffer memory. 256 and 1024MB are going to come a little bit later, November-ish. Bear in mind that almost all boards are manufactured by Foxconn and Flextronics.

To translate into plain English: Nvidia will get another record quarter in sales, but this time around - it won't be easy.

Unfortunately, you have a top-performing part, and you're in the lead as far as DX10 user base is considered, analysts love you... and you go and crap on it with presentation containing white elephants.

Graphzilla was talking with white mice, obviously. µ