News 512MB video cards land left, right and centre...

[Tim S]

Today has proved to be an evolutionary day in the world of 3D - with two separate stories about the release of high-end video cards with a 512MB frame buffer. The manufacturers in question later confirmed both stories.

First off, ATI have announced that they will be showcasing a 512MB video card based around the R480 core at the Texas Gaming Festival that is being held in Dallas this weekend. We do not know the full name that this video card will be given or details on operating speeds just yet, but we know that it will be a part of the Radeon X850 series and will be available on PCI-Express only for the time being.

Here is a snippet from the press release:

"...the event will include an overclocking demonstration and a PC modding event. Attendees will get the opportunity to preview the world's first 512MB gaming card and one lucky gamer will even get to take one home."

The second announcement has been made by one of NVIDIA's board partners, namely Gainward, whose brand was recently bought by Palit. There were reservations, held by several key partners in the industry, about whether the Gainward reputation of being one of NVIDIA's more evolutionary board partners would live on. Today's confirmation from Gainward, stating that they are producing a SLI-ready GeForce 6800 Ultra with a 512MB frame buffer should silence the critics.

We understand that the card will have 256MB of memory on each side of the video card - something that I have made note of previously. The traces for an extra 256MB of memory have always been on NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 PCB. The thought of two GeForce 6800 Ultra's in SLI is rather tantalising, but doubling the frame buffer makes things that little bit more insane.

The cards will be available with both conventional air coolers and Gainward's CoolFX water cooler. We expect that the fastest air-cooled cards will be clocked at 430/1200MHz, while the card featuring the CoolFX water cooler should be clocked at 450/1200MHz.

We do not have pricing information on ATI's 512MB X850 series video card, but we understand that Gainward expects their cards to end up £150 to £200 more expensive than their current Ultra/2600 series video cards. Looking at the current prices of Gainward's video cards, we expect these babies to retail for anywhere starting from around £550 for a single card - a lot of money, but if you can afford one, you should be buying two for a cool £1100.

Our only reservation at this time is the availability of both cards. While the technological showcase is fantastic, we would all like to be able to buy these cards at some point. We can only estimate that you will be able to buy a video card with a 512MB frame buffer at some point during 2005.

[Firehed]

I hope this drops the cost of the 256MB cards. But what can I say... we now face the prospect of having a full gig of ram on just our video subsystem. Even if each half-gig on each card holds the same data, it's still incredible.

[RotoSequence]

I see left and right, but wheres "centre"?

[BlackMan]

that would be interesting running my computer that would have more gfx card memory than my ram in my computer

[Dinh]

Heh, I live in Houston, Hopefully i can attend

[Firehed]

Originally Posted by BlackMan

that would be interesting running my computer that would have more gfx card memory than my ram in my computer

That's just a dumb idea.... it's like running a 1.3ghz t-bird with a 6800 ultra.

[-EVRE-]

hey, I had a Athlon 1.2 ghz with a voodoo 3500 :P
good ol days when 16mb video ram was rockn and 256mb system mem was king!

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Dinh

Heh, I live in Houston, Hopefully i can attend

get some pics if you do go, drop them over to tim.smalley@bit-tech.net

[IanW]

Didn't Zap say he was planning to attend as well?

[DeathAwaitsU]

Originally Posted by bigz

get some pics if you do go, drop them over to tim.smalley@bit-tech.net

I vote he posts them on here instead, we don't want you keeping it for youself and drooling over all that gfx porn now do we .

Death

[Dinh]

Arhhhh, My boss is making me work that day lets see if i can convince him to let me off.

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by DeathAwaitsU

I vote he posts them on here instead, we don't want you keeping it for youself and drooling over all that gfx porn now do we .

Death

it was an offer to host the images.

[Spaced_invader]

Originally Posted by BlackMan

that would be interesting running my computer that would have more gfx card memory than my ram in my computer

tbh dude, if you could afford £1100 on graphics cards alone, i'm sure your system would have at least 2Gb+ of ram in it....

[Tim S]

Earlier today I received some pictures of ATI's 512MB X850 series video card in my inbox - here you go:





Notice that there are 8 BGA memory modules on the top of the board - considering that the current 256MB X850 series video cards have 4 BGA memory modules on the back side of the board too, I think we can conclude that there are 8 BGA memory modules on each side of the board. Interestingly though, they are not cooled on this part, whereas the DRAMs on ATI's 256MB X850's are cooled by the heatsink/fan on the top, and a heatspreader on the reverse.

Hopefully we will get some shots of Gainward's 512MB video card before too long too.

[Speak Easy]

Originally Posted by -EVRE-

hey, I had a Athlon 1.2 ghz with a voodoo 3500 :P
good ol days when 16mb video ram was rockn and 256mb system mem was king!

Hah, I still do, only my Athlon is 500mhz.

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Speak Easy

Hah, I still do, only my Athlon is 500mhz.

I have a Voodoo 3 somewhere, and I have a dead voodoo 2 SLI at my parent's house in the loft

[ChromeX]

Originally Posted by bigz

I have a Voodoo 3 somewhere, and I have a dead voodoo 2 SLI at my parent's house in the loft

I've got a Voodoo 2 under my bed in some anti-static bag, serves as a reminder to the good ol' days when 3DFX was king... ah the days

[Mister_Tad]

ive got a PowerVR 3dx, and it still works a treat, but i use the 6800GT for general use normally

interesting that the ram on the x850 isnt actively cooled
will be interesting to see what gainward do for their 512mb coolfx card, hopefully a contraption resembling the 5950 front+back waterblock monstrosity

[RotoSequence]

I have concerns over the noise level of the 512 mb X850; the relatively small area of the GPU heatsink is being cooled by one of those strange looking coolers to throw air out the back like the 5800 series-which were notoriously loud. I am curious about how well the cooling system actually works; I think ATI could likely have come up with a better design than this.

[DeathAwaitsU]

That card looks shhwwweeet .

Death