14 DAY TRIAL // While the PCI Express 2.0 is a fairly new standard it brings a number of pretty important features to the table and among them there is a higher available data bandwidth that would allow graphics cards to make better use of their entire potential without the bandwidth bottleneck encountered with the previous iteration of the standard. Even if the available bandwidth was more than enough for a single of dual setup with low and medium level cards, when creating a SLI or CrossFire setup with top of the line graphics cards from AMD or Nvidia, the older PCI Express seemed to quickly run out of Steam.
Nvidia stated some time ago that it will soon upgrade its entire line of graphics processing units in order to make them compatible with the new PCI Express 2.0 standard and it looks like the first to get the face lift will be the GeForce 8600 GTS, codenamed G84-400, as the manufacturing company already started shipping engineering samples of this new graphics processing unit to card producers. If all goes well, the first retail graphics cards to integrate the new GeForce 8600 GTS are expected to hit the market by the end of the year, according to the news site tcmagazine.
The new design of the 8600 GTS graphics processing unit is not radically different from what is already available on the market today as the board design will remain almost unchanged and the same will happen with the presence of the 6-pin power connector that is needed when the new chip is used in conjunction with mainboards compatible only with the PCI Express 1.1 standard. This power connector is present only for backward compatibility purposes and it will not be necessary when the GeForce 8600 GTS based graphics card will be used together with a motherboard compatible with PCIe 2.0.
Even if the Nvidia made GeForce 8800 Ultra is still the king of the hill in terms of raw performance and computing power, the manufacturing company plans to expand its product lines in order to be better positioned for the holiday season. Coming as a slightly lower end product than the Ultra version, the GeForce 8800 GT, codenamedG92/D8P, will dissipate around 110 watts. Which is really good news as it will take only a single slot active cooling system in order to keep the GT operating at reasonable temperatures.
The GeForce 8800 GT card will come with either 256MB or 512MB of DDR3 dedicated graphics memory and it should need only a single 2x3 connector in order to function. At the same time it looks like this new Nvidia made graphics processing unit will offer native HDMI support, just like the comparable AMD solutions.