14 DAY TRIAL // The past few weeks brought to us a lot of bad news about the graphics card manufacturer NVIDIA. While some of its cards were reported failing on the field, which generated a small disaster for the Santa Clara based company, ATI's 4870X2 took the lead on the market, and also forced NVIDIA to drop prices for its high-end cards. Even so, its 260 and 280 cards enjoyed little demand, while a new 260 card with 24 more stream processors than the original was somehow rejected by vendors.
Even so, the green company does have the resources to come up with better products, and the latest announcements regarding a future SLI 2 technology prove so. The recent news, however, is neither good, nor bad. On the one hand, NVIDIA is said to be readying three new cards, a 270 along with its big brother called the 290, as well as a dual card code named “China Syndrome”. On the other hand, there are some voices that question all of these cards, as well as the company's capability of coming up with a dual card.
While the launching of three new cards is good news for NVIDIA, these three fresh solutions may not bring performance improvements over existing cards, says the Inquirer. Today, the green graphics card manufacturer has the fastest single GPU on the market, namely the GTX280. But that is only a graphics processor, and, as users are looking to acquire graphics cards, the 280 loses it crown to ATI 4870X2, which wins them all: performance levels, power efficiency, and performance per dollar.
This may be the reason for the creation of the new 270 and 290 cards. We're talking here a shrunk GT200, called GT206, which features the same clock per clock performance, but can boost margins by reducing costs. Working with a 55nm die should reduce area with 70 percent compared to the 65nm, while the power consumption should drop around 30 percent. Since the speed is said to remain the same, the power efficiency would be all about the new cards. And to name it, the Inquirer says that 270 will theoretically have a TDP of 164W, while the 290 should have 212W.
Some changes may also come here, as the manufacturer can play a little with the cards' speeds and power. That means that we may see faster cards with the same power consumption as 260 and 280, but, if the speed remains the same, the power will change. One way or another, it appears that we'll be able to see the cards in November since they got to AIBs recently.
The dual card NVIDIA has in preparation might prove a big issue for the company as well. Its problems arise from the power consumption and heat dissipation, and it is well known that the green manufacturer had some problems with cooling down the G92 and GT200, and keeping a dual card at a normal temperature will be quite a challenge. Not to mention that it should provide better performance than 4870X2, while draining similar power.
The Inquirer doesn't seem too optimistic when talking about this dual card. The card is expected to fail in all scenarios, but the company will probably come up with a solution. Hopefully, it will be beneficial for users. The company must launch some nice graphics cards in the near future to balance ATI's speedy move into the first place on the market.