News for "55 nm"

Galaxy is readying another variant of the GeForce 9600 GT Low Power Edition. Prior to this, the company had launched the 9600 GT Low Power, Low Profile (LPLP edition), and the 9600 GT Green Edition. Unlike the two, the new variant uses a full-height PCB, and a cooler made by Cooler Master, that doesn't span into more than one expansion slot.

The card draws all its power from the PCI-Express slot, and uses a 2+1 phase power design. Under the cooler is a 55 nm G94 GPU, with clock speeds of 600/1625 MHz (core/shader). The 512 MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory is passively cooled under the cooler's air-flow. It is clocked at 900 MHz (1800 MHz DDR). Output is care of DVI, D-Sub, and audio-relayed HDMI connectors. It's pricing and availability isn't disclosed yet.


Source: Expreview

With rival AMD having a production-grade 40 nm graphics processor, and UMC's recent announcement of being ready with a high-performance 40 nm manufacturing node, the conditions are increasingly favourable for NVIDIA to flag-off large-scale production of 40 nm GPUs. According to Chinese print-media Commercial Times, the company set its foundry outsourcing schedule for within Q2 2009, with TSMC and UMC being the regular foundry-partners.

Within this quarter, NVIDIA will start mass-production of the entry-level GT218, high-end mobile GT215 and mainstream desktop GT214 and GT216 GPUs. Additionally, the company may also expand its output for the 55 nm G200b high-end GPU.

Source: DigiTimes

Having begun its GeForce GTX 275 lineup with two cards: the 896 MB base-model (896-P3-1170-AR) and its 1792 MB twin (017-P3-1175-AR), EVGA sought to expand it with factory-overclocked models with its usual overclock-grading scheme. The first in its series is the SuperClocked (SC) model (896-P3-1171-AR). The card features the design and color-theme EVGA used for its GeForce GTX 260 55 nm series. It features 240 stream processors, 896 MB of GDDR3 memory across a 448-bit wide interface, and support for 3-way SLI.

Featuring a tier-one factory overclock, the card comes with clock speeds of 648 MHz (core), 1458 MHz (shader) and 2376 MHz (memory), against the reference clock speeds of 633/1404/2268 MHz (core/shader/memory). Put on pre-order by the EVGA store, the card is set to retail for US $269.99.

Reigning supreme again in the desktop segment, NVIDIA is looking forward to taking the wraps off its GeForce GTX 200M mGPU series. The new GPU series looks to up the performance offer by 50%, as claimed by the company. In the league are GeForce GTX 280M, GTX 260M and GTS 160M. Before you infer from the product names that at least two of them are based on the G200 graphics processor, let us break it to you, they're not. The entire series is based on the 55 nm G92b series. The 55 nm manufacturing technology seems to have facilitated some jumps in reference clock speeds.

NVIDIA sought to give the GeForce 9600 GT a refresh with a new SKU, the 9600 GT Green Edition, that makes use of the reduced thermal footprints of the 55 nm G94 graphics core, and slightly reduced clock speeds, to result in energy-efficient graphics cards. Some of these do not require the 6-pin PCI-E power input. Gigabyte has its first accelerator based on this core, the GV-N96TSL-1GI. The company goes a step ahead in exploiting the thermal characteristics of the core, to come up with a silent-cooler design.

The cooler which Gigabyte refers to as "Silent Cell", consists of a central GPU contact block from which heatpipes emerge, conveying heat to an aluminum fin array that spans across the full length of the card. A part of it even protrudes out of the back-plate. The cooler relies on convectional currents of the air inside the case to draw heat from the fins, and leave the case through the backplate. Cooling aside, Gigabyte got generous with the amount of memory: 1 GB of GDDR3 across a 256-bit wide bus. Perhaps it compensates for the slightly reduced clock speeds, the extant to which, isn't known as of now. The card will hit shelves shortly, by when we could tell its price.


Source: Donanim Haber

Close to ten days before ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series rolls out at the upcoming CeBIT event, one of its eggs seems to have hatched a little early. Dell's Indian website has already started listing it in the specifications of the Studio 15 notebook. Enter Mobility Radeon HD 4570. This mGPU is derived from the 55 nm RV710 graphics processor, and intends to be a handy performance boost over integrated graphics. It features 80 stream processors, 8 texture memory units, and 4 raster operations units. It connects to GDDR3, DDR2 memory using its 64-bit wide memory bus. The card used in Dell's Studio 15 sports 256 MB of memory. The mGPU is expected to outperform competing NVIDIA G110M by 20~30%, while keeping its TDP rating at a mere 13 W. Once formally announced, one could expect to hear more about this mGPU.


Source: GPU Café

Inno3D are excited to launch the Inno3D GeForce GTX 260 with FreezerX2 cooler that offers double the cooling performance and better value for your buck.

FreezerX2 Features

• Dual 8 cm ball bearing PWM fan, cooling power x 2
• DHT Technology, cooling efficiency x 2
• 2 mm fin distance, airflow x 2
• Smooth sanded base, contact area x 2
• Triple heatpipe cooling performance
• 55 nm Manufacturing Process
• Less power consumption with 175 W

It is clear now, that AMD's next performance GPU, the RV790 will be built on the 55 nm manufacturing process. To build on this information, sources tell German website Hardware-Infos that one of the factors that will help the new GPU perform better and run at higher clock-speeds than its predecessor, the RV770 does, is the newer improved 55 nm manufacturing process it will be built on. Going by the foundry-partner codename "55GT", the RV790 may get a little help from its superior silicon fabrication, which invariably makes it more expensive to manufacture.

One of the reasons behind why AMD is starting its 40 nm GPU lineup with a mainstream GPU such as RV740, is that the 40 nm process needs further development by foundry companies. It hasn't developed to the level that safely permits manufacturing high-end GPUs with stellar transistor-counts. For the same reason, NVIDIA's 40 nm conquest will be flagged off by the entry-level GT218 GPU. High-density circuits built on the current 40 nm process are known to be very prone to electrical leakage.