IT SEEMS the board which will DAAMIT will use as a host for its R600 GPU and corresponding components features a number of innovations and improvements that are interesting, to say the least.
First of all, you need to know that this PCB (Printed Circuit Board) is the most expensive one that DAAMIT has ever ordered. It's a complex 12-layer monster with certain manufacturing novelties used in order to support the requirements of the R600 chip, most notably the 512-bit memory controller and the distribution of power to the components.
The memory chips are arranged in a similar manner as on the G80, but each memory chip has its own 32-bit wide physical connection to the chip's RingBus memory interface. Memory bandwidth will therefore range from anywhere between 115 (GDDR3 at 8800GTX-style 900MHz in DDR mode - 1.8GHz) and 140.1GB/s (GDDR4 at 1.1GHz DDR, or 2.2GHz in marketingspeak).
This will pretty much leave the Geforce 8800 series in the dust, at least as far as marketing is concerned. O course, 86GB/s sounds pretty much like nothing when compared to 140GB/s - at least expect to see that writ large on the retail boxes.
The R600 board is HUGE but funnily enough, biot in length. Even though the very first revision of the board was as long as the 7900GX2, back in late August/early September engineers pulled a miracle and significantly reduced the size of the board. Right now, they are working on even further optimisations of components, but, from what we saw, this is the most packed product in history of 3D graphics.
The PCB will be shorter than 8800GTX's in every variant, and you can compare it to X1950XT and 7900GTX. The huge thing is the cooler. It is a monstrous, longer-than-the-PCB quad-heat pipe, Artic-Cooling style-fan on steroids looking beast, built from a lot of copper. Did we say that it also weighs half a ton?
This is the heaviest board that will hit the market and you will want to install the board while holding it with both hands. The cooler actually enhances the structural integrity of the PCB, so you should be aware that R600 will bring some interesting things to the table.
If you ask yourself why in the world AMD would design such a thing, the answer is actually right in front of you. Why is it important that a cooler is so big? Well, it needs to dissipate heat from practically every element of the board: GPU chip, memory chips and the power regulation unit.
There will be two versions of the board: Pele comes with GDDR4 memory, and UFO has GDDR3 memory, as Charlie already wrote here. DAAMIT is currently contemplating one and two gigabyte variants, offering a major marketing advantage over Graphzilla's "uncomputerly" 640 and 768MB.
Did we mention two gigabytes of video memory? Yup, insane - though perhaps not in the professional world, where this 2GB board will compete against upcoming G80GL and its 0.77/1.5GB of video memory. We do not expect that R600 with 2GB will exist in any other form than in FireGL series, but the final call hasn't been made yet.
The original Rage Theatre chip is gone for good. After relying on that chip for Vivo functions for almost a decade, the company decided to replace the chip with the newer digital Rage Theatre 200. It is not decided what marketing name will be used, but bear in mind that the R600 will feature video-in and video-out functions from day one. The death of the All-in-Wonder series made a big impact on many people inside the company and now there is a push to offer biggest support for HD in and out connectors.
When we turn to power, it seems the sites on-line are reporting values that are dead wrong, especially when mentioning the special power connectors which were present on the A0 engineering sample. Our sources are claiming they are complying to industry standards and that the spec for R600 is different that those rumoured. Some claim half of the rumours out there began life as FUD from Nvidia.
For starters, the rumour about this 80nm chip eating around 300W is far from truth. The thermal budget is around 200-220 Watts and the board should not consume more power than a Geforce 8800GTX. Our own Fudo was right in a detail - the R600 cooler is designed to dissipate 250 Watts. This was necessary to have an cooling headroom of at least 15 per cent. You can expect the R680 to use the same cooler as well and still be able to work at over 1GHz. This PCB is also the base for R700, but from what we are hearing, R700 will be a monster of a different kind.
As far as the Crossfire edition of the board goes, we can only say: good bye and good riddance.
Just like RV570, the X1900GT board, the R600 features new dual-bridge connector for Crossfire capability. This also ends nightmares of reviewers and partners, because reviewing Crossfire used to be such a pain, caused by the rarily of the Crossfire edition cards.
Expect this baby to be in stores during Q1'07, or around January 30th.
