Graphics specialist Nvidia has announced the availability of the eagerly awaited GeForce 7800 GTX GPU (graphics processing unit).
Built on a 0.11-micron process and using PCI Express graphics bus technology, the core runs at 430MHz alongside 256Mb of 1.2GHz GDDR3 memory. It has a 256-bit memory interface capable of delivering a bandwidth of up to 38.4GB/s
Nvidia says that the chip also has 24 pixel pipelines, delivering a fill rate of up to 10.32 billion pixels per second, and eight Vertex pipes producing up to 860 million vertices a second. The 7800 GTX also features dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs (Random Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converters) for display resolutions up to and including 2,048×1,536 at 85Hz.
The single slot solution cards require a minimum 400W PSU with 12V rating of 26A while the SLI configuration requires min 500W PSU with 12V rating of 34A.
The card provides support for Nvidia’s own SLI (Scalable Link Interface) and PureVideo technologies along with Microsoft’s DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0. The company says an all-new Nvidia CineFX 4.0 engine delivers twice the floating point shading power of the previous generation.
Most of the main OEMs – with the exception of Dell – have committed to the 7800 including HP, Acer, Fujitsu Siemens and NEC. The graphics board manufacturers on board include the likes of Systemax, VoodooPC, Alienware and Hypersonic.
For those who remain cynical about product launches which don’t appear in the stores for several months, Nvidia says it has been shipping the chips to OEMs and card manufacturers for several weeks in order that there is sufficient product on launch day.
‘We’ve never had such widespread volume availability of a GPU on launch day,’ declared Jeff Fisher, Nvidia’s executive vice president of worldwide sales. ‘Frankly, this breakthrough in availability is as significant as the breakthrough the GeForce 7800 GTX GPU makes in performance.’
The 780 GTX supports all the recent flavours of Windows as well as the Mac OSX.
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