NVIDIA introduces G72 and GeForce 7300 GS
Today, 18th January 2006, sees the launch of NVIDIA's first 90nm desktop graphics processor, codenamed G72, and its first desktop SKU.The company's move to 90nm has been well discussed in the online technology press, especially since ATI have successfully made the transition already and are shipping 90nm desktop parts, produced by TSMC who NVIDIA use for G72, in reasonable and sustained quantity.
The ability to squeeze more transistors into the same space, and by association make the same design smaller by placing it on a smaller silicon process, is the current way forward for graphics chip makers, using the smaller process nodes to advance their technology.
G72
Their first 90nm product, G72 is effectively NV44, which powers GeForce 6200, in configuration. That means a single fragment quad (four pixel units), three vertex shader processors and two raster units with which to draw pixels with.However, being a GeForce 7 class processor, carrying all the basic technology of G70 and the current GeForce 7800 product family, that means support for the extras that class of GPU has over the 6-series product.
So G72 supports FP16 blending, transparency antialiasing, a dual MADD fragment ALU setup, better scalar performance in the vertex units and gamma correction for antialiasing in the ROPs, to name just a few of the additions that made it in to G70, compared to NV40, as the base architectures. We covered those here.
G72 also supports NVIDIA TurboCache technology, which allows it to use system memory as it if were connected directly to the GPU on the graphics board. It augments that ability to a 64-bit local memory bus - the same as NV44 - to allow it much the same configuration as we saw with GeForce 6200 TurboCache parts.
That bring us nicely on to the first G72-powered SKU.
GeForce 7300 GS
NVIDIA bring the GS moniker, currently doing great business with the GeForce 6800 GS and soon-to-come GeForce 7800 GS AGP, to the low-end of 7-series GeForce.The first available configurations are PCI Express products, powered by a 550MHz G72 with 400MHz (800MHz DDR) local memory.
NVIDIA predict performance at twice that of 6200 TurboCache 128MiB parts, which when you consider the core clock (550MHz vs 350MHz) of the G72 GPU and its basic ALU improvements, almost seems conservative.
Board Configurations
NVIDIA have two initial board configurations for G72 and GeForce 7300 GS, one a larger board with DVI and VGA, one low profile with just DVI.
Pricing and Availability
Pricing should be equal to outgoing 6200 TurboCache products and availabilty starts now in Asia in time for Chinese New Year, with world-wide availability in quantity claimed for early February. Sub £100 in the UK is a definite given.Summary
With support for all of NVIDIA's current-generation technology, claimed support for decoding 1080p H.264, and an attractive price for OEM and low-end customers, the GeForce 7300 GS seems a worthy update to GeForce 6200 and makes G72 the first NVIDIA desktop GPU to be created on a 90nm major process node. TSMC are the proud fabrication partner for that effort.Look out for a full review as soon as we get our hands on one, when availability spreads out of the Asia-Pacific region to the rest of the world. Nearly all of NVIDIA's AIB partners should have a G72-based product in their lineup before long.
The rest of the NVIDIA desktop product line is set to transition to 90nm in due course in this first quarter of 2006, with those releases hot on the heels of this one.
