14 DAY TRIAL // The upcoming generation of graphics cards in the GeForce 9900 family from Nvidia gets detailed piece by piece once again, with some leaked information regarding the GTX heatsink. The metal structure has been pictured by tech website PCOnline and its solid layout seems to confirm the fact that the new cards will run pretty hot.
The stock heatsink will only dissipate the heat produced by a single GT-200 graphics processor, as there are currently no plans for a dual-chip card. The heatsink comes with only one fan, which should be enough for the estimated 240 stream processors. However, it is pretty long, and most of all, it takes up two PCI slots.
More than that, according to the pictures, the GeForce 9900 GTX will sport two PCI-Express power connectors (an 8-pin and a 6-pin connector) for additional power (this means that the card will get 220 watts of power) and there are connector sockets for triple-SLI support.
The rest of the design has no improvements over the previous GeForce 8800 GTS model, but since it is a stock cooler, Nvidia's manufacturing partners will have plenty of room for additional tweaks. According to PCOnline, both the Nvidia GeForce 9900 GTX and the previous 8800 GTX cards will be 27 centimeters long.
Since the stock cooler is similar to the 8800 GTS counterpart, it is expected to work with both the 65- and 55-nanometer GT-200 chips. Although Nvidia planned the transition to the 55-nanometer micro-architecture, it will still manufacture its chips in 65-nanometer version, as a safety measure to minimize delay risks.
The GT-200 silicon has already reached the A2 revision and the manufacturer seems to plan its introduction in 65-nanometer form, then switch to 55-nanometer as the technology matures.