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GeForce 7 series

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The GeForce 7 Series is the seventh generation of NVIDIA's GeForce graphics cards.

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:

  • NVIDIA Intellisample 4.0 technology
  • NVIDIA CineFX 4.0 engine
  • NVIDIA UltraShadow II technology
  • NVIDIA PureVideo technology
  • Transparency Supersampling (TSAA) & Transparency Multisampling (TMAA) Anti-Aliasing
  • 64-bit Texture Filtering and Blending
  • NVIDIA nView multi-display technology
  • NVIDIA Digital Vibrance Control 3.0
  • 128-Bit Studio-Precision Computation
  • 256-bit Memory interface
  • PCI Express support
  • Complete DirectX support, including DirectX 9.0c and lower
  • OpenGL 2.0 and lower support
  • NVIDIA SLI Multi-GPU ready
  • Dual DVI-I + VIVO + HDTV

GeForce 7300 series

Announced January 18, 2006, the 7300 GS is currently the only available model. There are indications on NVIDIA's website that indicate a GeForce 7300 LE may be a future release as well (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 architecture for this card is similar to the GeForce 6200. 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 GS is definitely at the bottom of the totem pole for the GeForce 7 series GPUs. In many ways, the 7300 GS is actually inferior to the 6800 series GPUs (see chart above).

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 7600 Series

NVIDIA has announced immediate availability of the GeForce 7600 series on March 9, 2006. 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:

  • PCIe native
  • 560 MHz core frequency
  • 128-bit memory interface
  • 22.4 GB/sec. memory bandwidth
  • 6.72 Billion pixels/sec. fill rate
  • 700 Million vertices/sec.
  • 12 pixels per cycle
  • Built in dual-link DVI support for 2560x1600 resolution

The 7600 features all the features of as the family and is priced right in the mainstream market. Bringing the Geforce 7 to the masses.

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 MB 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 MB version. [1]

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

File:7800gt.jpg

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 6800 Ultra GeForce 7300 GS GeForce 7600 GT GeForce 7800 GTX GeForce 7900 GTX ATI Radeon X1800 XT ATI Radeon X1900 XTX
Transistor count 222 million 112 million 178 million 302 million 278 million 321 million 384 million
Manufacturing process 0.13 micrometer 0.09 micrometer 0.09 micrometer 0.11 micrometer 0.09 micrometer 0.09 micrometer 0.09 micrometer
Die Area 288 mm² 77 mm² 125 mm² 333 mm² 196 mm² 288 mm² 352 mm²
Core clock speed 400 MHz 550 MHz 560 MHz 430 MHz 650 MHz 625 MHz 650 MHz
Number of pixel shader processors 16 4 12 24 24 16 48
Number of pixel pipes 16 4 12 24 24 16 16
Number of texturing units 16 4 12 24 24 16 16
Number of vertex pipelines 6 3 5 8 8 8 8
Peak pixel fill rate (theoretical) 6.4 Gigapixel/s 1.1 Gigapixel/s 4.48 Gigapixel/s 6.88 Gigapixel/s 10.4 Gigapixel/s 10.0 Gigapixel/s 10.4 Gigapixel/s
Peak texture fill rate (theoretical) 6.4 Gigatexel/s 2.2 Gigatexel/s 6.72 Gigatexel/s 10.32 Gigatexel/s 15.6 Gigatexel/s 10.0 Gigatexel/s 10.4 Gigatexel/s
Memory interface 256-bit 64-bit 128-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit
Memory clock speed 1.1GHz GDDR3 800MHz GDDR2 1.4GHz GDDR3 1.2GHz GDDR3 1.6GHz GDDR3 1.5GHz GDDR3 1.55GHz GDDR3
Peak memory bandwidth 35.2GB/s 6.4GB/s 22.4GB/s 38.4GB/s 51.2GB/s 48.0GB/s 49.6GB/s

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 Gus. Building upon one of the world's most advanced Gus, these are very fast cards that are similar to the specs and features of the future PS3 GPU. This GPU will run at 550mhz. This will allow Sony to ship their PS3's in millions of units, without fearing Fab & Production issues such as Microsoft's XBOX 360 systems had.

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 MB 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 [2]).

Due to shortages of memory modules for the 512 MB 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, some sources claim that ATI is readying a massive price slash on its latest products to better compete with NVIDIA, as well as ATI announcing a new x1800GTO card being released by March 31 of this year.

This card is clearly a performance increase over the 7800 but it remains to be seen how it compares to the latest from ATI. This card is not being released until around the second week in March 2006.

There has been no official word from NVIDIA, but many sources on the internet indicate that these outlined specifications are what NVIDIA will confirm 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 March 9th, 2006

This card like the 7900 GTX is a revision of the G70 GPU and is produced at 90 nm. It too offers all the features of the 7800 series and a performance to price ratio which would be attractive to most buyers.

Featuring 24 pixel pipelines it will be as fast as a 256 MB 7800 GTX and has an MSRP of $299 USD on the generic version at reference clock rates, the overclock editions with greater performance go up to $349 USD.

Upcoming products

No new GeForce 7 Series products are officially announced, although there is some speculation about an AGP version of the 7600GT (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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