Nvidia's PC gaming chip goes on sale

Nvidia Corp. has started selling its latest graphics processing unit (GPU) for PC game enthusiasts. The GeForce 8800 GT is a lower-priced GPU in the 8 Series line that takes advantage of Microsoft's DirectX 10 graphics technology found in Windows Vista. PC games built for the platform include Crysis, Hellgate: London, and Gears of War.

The latest GPU has 112 stream processors and a 256bit memory interface. It also includes the latest version of Nvidia's PureVideo high definition (HD) technology. Pricing for the GeForce 8800 GT falls between $199 and $259. The GeForce 8800 Ultra, for example, is priced at $590.

Each stream processor in the 8800 GT has been clocked at 1.5GHz, with a memory interface running at 900MHz. The GPU is designed for the new PCIe 2.0 bus standard and is backward compatible with the original PCIe standard.

The second-generation PureVideo is a video-processing engine for games in either the HD DVD or Blu-ray formats. The new technology takes on all of the HD H.264 video decoding, freeing the CPU to perform other tasks and significantly reducing power consumption, heat, and noise, Nvidia said. GeForce 8800 GT-based graphics cards are available in leading add-in card manufacturers, retailers, and system builders.

The GeForce 8800 line is made to take advantage of Microsoft Windows Vista's advanced graphics capabilities, but some buyers have claimed Nvidia has failed to deliver. In April, a Website was launched in an attempt to gather enough support for a class-action suit.

Along with supplying GPUs for gaming, Nvidia recently started releasing processors that boost the performance of supercomputing environments. Called Tesla, the new line of GPUs can be used in PCs, workstations, or servers. Depending on the configuration, the GPUs can handle as much as 8teraflops, or 8 trillion calculations a second.

Nvidia also offers software development tools, called Cuda, for dividing supercomputing applications to run on the vendors' GPUs. The tools include a C-compiler for the GPU, debugger/profiler, dedicated driver, and standard libraries.

- Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek