X-bit labs

Nvidia Reported to Launch GeForce 7900 in March.

Category: Video

by Anton Shilov

[ 01/10/2006 | 11:21 PM ]

Nvidia Corp. these days is a company capable of keeping secrets pretty well: even specifications of the recently announced GeForce Go 7600 are not completely clear, not talking about unreleased products. Still some of the details regarding the next high-end graphics processing unit (GPU) in the company’s roadmap have leaked over the Internet.

The fresh code-named G71 graphics processor and what is claimed to be the GeForce 7900-series product lineup are expected to be officially announced during CeBIT show that is held in Hannover, Germany from March 9^th to March 15^th, claims Hexus.net web-site. The high-end GeForce 7900 GTX is projected to feature 32 pixel processors, operate in the range of 700MHz – 750MHz and come equipped with 1600MHz – 1800MHz GDDR3 memory.

Following Nvidia’s recently established traditions, the GeForce 7900 product lineup is expected to be commercially available at launch. Pricing is unknown.

Just like ATI Technologies, Nvidia has been redefining what is traditionally called a pixel pipeline in the recent years. Traditionally, a pixel pipeline consisted of texture mapping unit (TMU), pixel shader processor and raster operation (ROP) units. The modern pipeline from Nvidia consists of a pixel processor and a TMU, whereas ROPs are independent. In case of the G70 (GeForce 7800) and the G71 (GeForce 7900) there are 16 ROPs. ATI has split up the pixel pipeline totally in the most recent Radeon X1000-series: pixel shader processors, TMUs and ROPs act totally independently and their workload is managed by a special arbiter processor.

Given that modern GPUs work in a totally different way, it is very hard to estimate which of the forthcoming graphics processors – Radeon X1900 with 48 pixel shader processors, 16 TMUs and 16 ROPs clocked at up to 650MHz or GeForce 7900 with 32 pixel processors, 32 TMUs and 16 ROPs clocked at up to 750MHz – will be faster in modern games and benchmarks.

Nvidia Corp. does not usually comment on unreleased products.