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MSI N280GTX SUPER OC review |
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Written by Dimitar Dinchev a.k.a. Veseliq
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Monday, 10 November 2008 |
Page 3 of 15
Page 3 - Technical Specifications of NVIDIA GT200
Since the release of the 8800GTX until now not much was done for core design. The core was G80 and it had 24 ROP, 384 bit memory interface, 128 scalar processors and if this still looks impressing now, upon its release two years ago it was even more so! Since then until recently, NVIDIA had it easy - ATI were delaying R600, struggling between working on a new core and integrating themselves in AMD at the same time.
Last year G92 was released and with it two models with excellent price/performance ratios - 8800GT and 8800GTS. The core was nothing new - the ROP were downsized to 16, the memory interface to 256 bit, the manufacturing process was 65nm based, and honestly speaking that was just one cheap version of G80. Yes, there were changes in its architecture, concerning addressing and texturizing units, still nothing revolutionary though. NVIDIA released the cards as 8800XXX instead of 9800XXX, in order not to cripple the sales of the older 8800GTX/GTS 320/640 ones that were still in the store shelves. Their marketing strategy later renamed these to 9800GT/9800GTX, and the 8800GS model released next became 9600GSO.
Physical characteristics of NVIDIA 280GTX are quite close to the monstrous 9800GX2. Board length is 267mm, which isn't more than other top models of the company. The cooler unlike in 9800GX2 is plastic on the bottom, which is good, since the metal bottom of the enormous 9800GX2 cooler used to get quite close to the south bridge of many motherboards (an exact example is ASUS Striker || Formula) thus getting grossly overheated.
The cooler is designed in such way that air is channeled in one direction - out of the case. That allows very little hot air to remain inside and the 80mm fan of 280GTX manages to keep reasonable RPM even under heavy load. The maximal power consumption of 280GTX under load could reach 236 watt. Bearing in mind that through PCI-E 1.1 only 75W can be supplied, the rest must come through the additional 6 pin connectors.
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