Information AboutGeforce 7 |
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The GeForce 7 Series is the seventh generation of NVIDIA 's GeForce Graphics Card s. GEFORCE 7 SERIES The major improvement of the GeForce 7 series over the GeForce 6 is an increase of 8 pixel pipelines over the GeForce 6's 16 pipelines. However, the number of Raster Operation Pipelines (ROPs) remains 16, indicating that NVIDIA feels that increasing the raw pixel output is less important than supporting more computation per pixel. Each pipeline has also been augmented to improve performance of complex shaders. The number of vertex pipelines has also been increased to 8, up from 6. The other major changes are hardware processing of HDTV H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and WMV9 streams and better quality Anti-aliasing . Geforce 7 Series base features:
GEFORCE 7300 SERIES With no SLI-capability, a much slower 64-bit memory interface, and drastically fewer pixel-pipelines and vertex shaders than the 7800 GT, the 7300 graphics cards are definitely at the bottom of the totem pole for the GeForce 7 series GPUs. These cards are basically 6200 series cards with the newer capabilities introduced in the GeForce 7 series. The 7300 series cards are currently available in two versions: the 7300 GS (announced January 18, 2006) and now the lighter version, the GeForce 7300 LE. (see here ). GeForce 7300 GS On January 18, 2006, NVIDIA officially announced the immediate release of the GeForce 7300 GS graphics card. Like most of the GeForce 7 series, the 7300 GS is currently only available with a PCI-express interface. The RAMDAC is still at 400MHz like the original 7800 GT, but NVIDIA has scaled the memory interface down to a mere 64-bit interface. The 7300 GS (G72) series was designed to replace the 6200 TC (NV44) series. With the same improved pipelines and pixel/vertex shading power inherited from its bigger brother, the 7800 series, albeit scaled down to fit budget market needs, the 7300 GS should have around double the performance of the 6200 TC. The 7300 GS also has the same Transparency AA feature and now supports FP16 Blending & Filtering, neither of which was in the 6200 TC. GeForce 7300 LE A lighter version of the 7300GS, It has DDR memory opposed to the 7300 GS having GDDR2/GDDR3 memory, it also has slightly lower core clock speed(450mhz vs. 550mhz) according to anand tech(http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2718&p=2). It is also only available in the PCI-express interface. GEFORCE 7600 SERIES NVIDIA has announced immediate availability of the GeForce 7600 series on March 9, 2006. Models currently available are GeForce 7600GT & 7600GS. See here . Geforce 7600 GT This is the latest mid range product in the 7 Series family. Quick specifications for GeForce 7600 GT from NVIDIA documents:
The 7600 features all the features of the GeForce 7 family, and is priced right for the mainstream market. It was made to provide a Geforce 7 series card to the mass market. It sells for around $184 USD. It compares well against ATI's answer the radeon X1800gto which is a little more expensive at around $250 USD but the X1800gto performs better due to its 256 bit bus. GeForce 7600 GS On March 22, 2006, NVIDIA announced the immediate availability of the GeForce 7600 GS GPU targeted at the low-mid end. This new GPU will officially assume the place of the GeForce 6600GT which has been around for quite some time. Some quick specifications:
Primary testing showed that a GeForce 7600 GS based card outperformed a GeForce 6600 GT and left the Radeon X1600 PRO in the dust. The street price for the GPU is $129-$149. GEFORCE 7800 SERIES GeForce 7800 GTX The GeForce 7800 GTX (codenamed G70) is the first GPU in the series, launched on June 22 2005 with immediate retail availability. The GeForce 7800 GTX supports the latest version of Vertex And Pixel Shaders , currently at 3.0. It is a natively PCI Express chip, but use of a bridge chip could allow an AGP version to be produced (early versions of the GeForce 6800 Series were natively AGP and used a bridge chip to convert to PCI Express). SLI support has been retained and even improved. A 512 MB version of the GeForce 7800 GTX was released on November 14 2005 . This version appears to be the rumored GeForce 7800 Ultra, of which there has been much speculation for the last few months, as the card features more than simply an increased frame buffer from 256 MB to 512 MB. The card features a much improved core clock speed of 550 MHz vs. 430 MHz (27.9% increase) and fast 1.1 ns GDDR3 memory clocked at 1.7 GHz vs. 1.2 GHz (41.7% increase), when compared to the original version. Like ATI's X1800XT, the addition of another 256 MiB of memory, and to a lesser extent, the increased clock speeds, have raised the heat and power output significantly. To combat this, the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 sports a much larger yet quieter dual slot cooling solution when compared to the original 256 MiB version. {Link without Title} According to PCworld.com , the 7800 GTX is "one of the most complex processors ever designed". The GPU has 300 million transistors (the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ CPU has 233.2 million transistors), along with 24 pixel and 8 vertex pipelines. Rumours had suggested that the card actually had 32 pixel pipelines, though this has since turned out to be incorrect as the GPU's transistor count is insufficent for 32 pipelines. This card includes new standard features, such as subsurface scattering, HDR lighting, and radiosity, to name a few. The mainstream success of this card will depend on how much the double-exponentially expanding technology sector can drive down the initial price ($599 USD ) of this card; currently the 7800 GTX can be found for around $449 USD . GeForce 7800 GT The GeForce 7800 GT is the second GPU in the series, launched on August 11 2005 with immediate retail availability. It has 20 pixel pipelines, 7 vertex shaders, 16 ROPs and a 400 MHz core clock, 500 MHz memory clock (1 GHz effective) using GDDR3 memory. The GeForce 7800 GT has been introduced as a more affordable alternative to the 7800 GTX. As of February 2006 , online retail prices as low as $250 (after rebate) USD have been seen, eliciting comments from some enthusiasts that this card may represent the new video card "sweetspot" in terms of price versus performance. There has been speculation by some gamers that CPU limits and the potential for unlocking/overclocking may imply that the 7800 GT has the potential to perform at the same level as the 7800 GTX. Efforts to enable the unlocking of the last "quad" (NVIDIA's name for groups of four pipelines) and the remaining vertex shader have been unsuccessful because NVIDIA uses a new technology called laser locking, which severs the internal connections to the quad and renders it impossible for any software to unlock it. Here is how the released versions of the "GeForce 7" series family compare to NVIDIA's previous flagship GPU, the GeForce 6800 Ultra, in addition to ATI's newly released Radeon X1800 XT: GeForce 7800 GS On February 3, 2006, NVIDIA announced the 7800 GS as the first AGP video card in the GeForce 7 series lineup. An AGP version of the high end Geforce 7 Series, this new card is boasted by NVIDIA as "the fastest AGP card in existence", though notably it has only 16 pipelines instead of the 20 that the 7800 GT has. Clockspeeds are 375 MHz for the graphics core and 600 MHz (1200 MHz DDR) for the memory. Different vendors may deviate from the standards. More info on the 7800 GS GEFORCE 7900 SERIES NVIDIA has officially announced availability of the GeForce 7900 series on March 9, 2006. See here . NVIDIA's 7900 series is a product refresh and not a new generation of NVIDIA's GPU. Building upon one of the world's most advanced GPUs, these are very fast cards that are similar to the specs and features of the future PlayStation 3 (PS3) GPU. This GPU will run at 550mhz. GeForce 7900 GTX The GeForce 7900 GTX is the latest revision of the (G70 Core), this 90 nm produced G70 (named G71) features all the same features as its older brother the 7800 GTX but is built upon the smaller manufacturing process. Featuring a clock speed of 650 MHz, opposed to the 550mhz speed of the 512 GTX, this card offers up to an 8 - 15% performance increase. It features a new 24-pixel pipeline superscalar GPU model, much like the 512 MiB 7800 GTX, but offers faster performance due to "improved pipeline design". "We changed the ROP performance as well as reconfigured some of the pipelines to make sure the card was more optimized over G70," Nvidia said (see {Link without Title} ). Due to shortages of memory modules for the 512 MiB GTX, NVIDIA decided to use the more readily available 1600 MHz memory. This also allows the card to be priced very competitively, giving ATI Technologies (NVIDIA’s main rival company) a harder time. In turn, ATI made a massive price slash in its current lineup. This card is clearly a performance increase over the 7800 and is very competitive with the latest from ATI. This card was released on March 9th, 2006. NVIDIA confirmed these rumored specifications on March 9th, 2006 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29928 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29821 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29983 GeForce 7900 GT This video card was released on 9 March 2006 . Like the 7900 GTX, it is a revised version of the G70 GPU(G71) that is produced at 90 nm. It too offers all the features of the 7800 series as well as an attractive performance-to-price ratio. Featuring 24 pixel pipelines, it is actually faster than the 256MiB version of the GeForce 7800 GTX, yet has an MSRP of $299 USD (for the base clockrate). The overclocked versions are priced up to $349 USD . GeForce 7900 GX2 This video card was not released for consumer use (that is you can't go to the store and buy it), but rather distributed to the OEM companies Dell and Alienware (which is now owned by Dell). The GeForce 7900 GX2 is two videocards stacked to fit as a dual slot solution. This is not like products such as the ASUS Dual GeForce 7800 GT, where two GPU's are on the same card. This enables Quad-SLI on two PCI-Express X16 slots The card features a 500Mhz GPU and 1200Mhz effective RAM speed. Other than that, it possibly sports the same specs as the GeForce 7900GT or 7900GTX. X-Bit labs had this article reviewing the GX2, however nVidia asked them to remove most of it. UPCOMING PRODUCTS No new GeForce 7 Series products are officially announced, although there is some speculation about an AGP version of the 7600GT, and certainly the 7600GS. G80 (or, using the old naming philosophy, NV50) is Nvidia's next GPU, with rumors pointing to either a Summer or Fall release in 2006. It will feature more than 300 million transistors, OpenEXR FP16 HDR with AntiAliasing, WGF 2.0, and DirectX 10 with Shader Model 4.0. It is rumored to be fabricated on the 80nm process. However, not much is known about this product, as Nvidia has done a good job of keeping the specifics confidential. For more information (when new information is available), click Here . SEE ALSO
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