14 DAY TRIAL // Two of Nvidia's upcoming graphics cards in the GeForce 9900 series got pictured yesterday. It's true that the images show an engineering drawing on the products rather than the functional unit, but they bring extra details about a series of products kept under the deepest secrecy.
According to a forum post at Xtreme Systems, the two picture cards are the upcoming 9900GTS and 9900GTX, both powered by Nvidia's GT-200 graphics engine. The two boards are codenamed P651 and P65x, respectively, and are both alleged to come with triple-SLI support.
Nvidia's triple-SLI technology usually requires a single 8-pin power connector to meet the card's additional power requirements, since the PCI-Express 2.0 port cannot supply it by itself. According to the board drawings, the 9900 GTS will take up to 225 watts of power (75 watts + 150 watts), while the 9900 GTX version will draw about 300 watts (75 watts + 75 watts + 150 watts).
While an 8-pin power connector can feed the board with 150 watts of power, a 6-pin PCI-Express power connector can only supply 75 watts. Despite the fact that the two cards are not expected to draw that much power (hopefully), the engineers chose a safe approach to ensure optimal power performance and stability.
Moreover, the two sketches unveil the presence of eight GDDR memory chips on the component side of the board, and there are probably another eight placed on the solder side. The memory layout seems to support the previous rumors regarding a 512-bit memory controller and the alleged 512 MB, 1024 MB and 2048 MB SKUs for the 9900 GTX model. However, the 9900 GTS engineering layout unveils the same number of memory sockets which does not add up with either the initial 448-bit memory controller, or with the 896 MB memory estimations.
As usual, Nvidia refused to give additional details as part of its policy not to comment on unofficial and unannounced products.