NVIDIA Drops 8800GS, Adds G98

All is well within NVIDIA’s land at the time being; they, much like Intel, are not impressed by AMD’s offerings and have decided to take it easy. For AMD’s new R600-based Radeon HD 2900 XT, NVIDIA has only done minor modifications to their existing G80 spearhead, the 8800GTX, so that it would clock higher and also given it a new name: 8800 Ultra.

Details were scarce about NVIDIA’s new graphics card, but soon we’ve learned that the 8800 Ultra will only be factory overclocked 8800GTX. Just as a reminder, we knew that it would still have only 128 stream processors, 768MB GDDR3. a 384-bit wide memory interface, but as for the frequencies for the core/memory, not much talk at all from NVIDIA. But it seems that the 8800 Ultra will be quite the competitor, because it will have a 675/2350MHz frequency, well above that air, and even, water cooled 8800GTX’s frequencies. That would give it a 112.8GB/s memory bandwidth, a way over what the R600 is expected to have and even more than what NVIDIA 8800 Ultra cards were supposed to have on Dell systems.

Aside from the 8800 Ultra existence being confirmed through Dell’s website and information from the INF file inside a ForceWare release, NVIDIA was also caught off guard and more info about a model called 8800GS leaked and we all had high hopes and all of that, because the card would have fitted slot on between the 8800GTS 320MB and the 8600GTS. But, according to the guys over at guru3d.com, NVIDIA mentioned that the codename 8800GS was a "typo that referenced a product that does not exist, and will not exist", and they also stated that "NVIDIA has no plans to release a GeForce 8800 GS". Although I do have some restraints concerning their "mistake", I find it odd for the personnel responsible in writing the software for the graphics cards to "invent" a codename for a product; it’s highly unlikely for somebody to do so. That means that either they had planned it, but then something came up and had to give up on the idea, or simply, they will release a product, maybe the same product, but under a different name.

And in the recent light of events, seeing how they have a thing for releasing information about future graphics cards through their driver releases, their beta releases being the favorite candidates, yet another codename leaked. This latest ForceWare 165.01 Beta is confirming the 8800 Ultra, but it also introduces the NVIDIA G98. I would have had reasons to believe that the G98 could be a name for something in the likes of 9800 (GTX, GTS), but it might very well be a codename for 8800 Ultra ... NOT. Anyway, we'll see in the near future if this is also a typo error, or if it is the real deal.

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