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NV25 Specs?
by Anna Filatova
11/26/2001 | 04:05 PM
The closer we get to the launching date of the new NVIDIA solution, the more rumors about its features crop up. Nevertheless, you can sometimes find some credible info among all this blah-blah stuff. Taking this info into account as well as the fact that some NV25 modification is already used in Miscrosoft X-Box console, we dare imagine some features of this product. Here is what the guys from NV news expect it to be like:
- 6 rendering pipelines;
- 300MHz core clock frequency;
- 600MHz memory frequency, 10.5GB/sec bandwidth;
- TwinView support;
- MPEG-2 decoding support implemented on the hardware level;
- An enhanced T&L unit with the second vertex pipeline;
- More progressive anti-aliasing algorithms;
- 0.13micron manufacturing technology.
Judging by the specs listed above, NV25 will differ from GeForce3 quite a lot. The major enhancements implemented in the new core include the introduction of additional pipelines, of the second vertex pipeline, finer manufacturing technology and as a result higher working frequencies.
We should also point out that besides the mentioned innovations, it is also very important that NV25 will finally have fully-fledged TwinView technology. Which is especially valuable, since the No.1 competitor of the upcoming product, ATI RADEON 8500 already supports normal dual-monitor configurations. It is also quite possible that NVIDIA will implement hardware MPEG-2 decoding (iDCT), which has already been introduced in the recently announced NV17M chipset.
However, much more interesting questions are connected not with the NV25 specs but with the shipping schedule for the first cards based on it. Because of numerous problems with beginning of NV25 mass production on TSMC fabs caused by high complexity of the product, we suppose that there still will be no graphics cards based on it in retail by the launching date. Remembering what happened to GeForce3, NV17M and nForce and products built on them, we believe that that NVIDIA will simply announce the features of its new product on that sacred day and the manufacturers will present the samples of their solutions based on it. The real cards on NV25 are most likely to appear only 2-3 months later after the official chip announcement, when all the problems with mass production will be eliminated.
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