8800GS 384MiB scores leaked

Friday 28th December 2007, 08:00:00 PM, written by Arun

Hardspell has obtained some 3DMark05, 3DMark06 and Crysis numbers for NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce 8800GS 384MiB. The card is basically a 192-bit G92 with only 12 ROPs, and it will be primarily aimed at OEMs but Hardspell claims board manufacturers are also planning to sell it in retail for $149-179.

The chip's core clock, shader clock and memory clock are expected to be 575MHz/1430MHz/1700MHz respectively, down from the 8800GT's 600MHz/1500MHz/1800MHz. Earlier leaks hinted at 6 clusters, so that put theoretical performance at around 70-75% that of the 8800GT's, assuming everything fits in the 384MiB memory footprint. However, newer information points at 7 clusters and some AIBs pairing it up with 768MiB of memory.

However, it can actually be faster than that when some parts of a frame are limited by processes such as triangle setup, attribute fetch, etc. - all of which should be less than 5% slower than on the 8800GT, as the only difference between the two in these workloads is the 575MHz core clock. Performance in 3DMark06 looks to be highly competitive with that of the HD3850, although we'll reserve our judgement until we have more numbers from real games.

From a financial point of view, the 8800GS is an interesting SKU: the 192-bit PCB should be less expensive than a 256-bit one, while 6x512Mbit GDDR3 should not be significantly more expensive than 8x256Mbit. Cooling should also be slightly less expensive than for a 8800GT.

Overall, this means NVIDIA can still ask a respectable price for these cut-down chips (they couldn't do this otherwise anyway, as G92 isn't exactly small) while offering an attractive product compared to 256MiB alternatives which easily become limited by their limited memory footprint. AMD still has significant pricing leverage with RV670 however, so neither this nor D9P should pose an unsurmountable problem to them.

nvidia ± 8800GS, G92, G94, RV670

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