Nvidia's GTX 280

Well, after plenty of speculation about Nvidia's next generation high-end graphics architecture, the "almost" official specs are in:

- 65nm TSMC process technology.
- ~1.4 Billion transistors (almost double the amount in the current G92's Geforce 9800 GTX/8800 GTS 512MB/8800 GT, etc, 65nm core).
- 24x24mm die -576mm^2- (480mm^2 in G80; 330mm^2 in G92).
- 240 scalar processors (128 in G92).
- 32 Render Output Processors -ROP's- (28 in G80; 16 in G92).
- 80 Texture Mapping Units -TMU's- (from 64 in G92).
- 512bit-wide memory bus (doubled from G92).
- 600MHz core clockspeed, 1300MHz shader clockspeed.
- 1024MB of 1100MHz GDDR3 (effectively 2200MHz) which, coupled with the 512bit bus, provides for 140GB/s of bandwidth.
- 236 Watt Thermal Design Power.
- 933 MegaFLOPS (FLOPS -or FLoating Point Operations per Second- is a largely theoretical metric).

It should be released in mid-June in two versions:

A GTX 280 with the specs above, for a 600+ US dollar price tag.
A GTX 260 version featuring a binned version of the same core, with some disabled portions, less memory, but also a much lower price -US$ 449- and lower TDP -182 Watt-.

Early performance leaked on to the internet suggest it is much faster than G92, sometimes over 100% more.
It also seems to point to a much more aggressive stance on GPGPU through Nvidia's CUDA API, with the helping hand of the brand new FP64 support built into the chip.

As usual, let's wait for proper results on launch day to get a better assessment of its capabilities.

GT200 and the magic ever-flippin' specs

These past few weeks have seen the rebirth of the GT200 leaked spec craze, after the relatively quietness of the 9800 GTX/9800 GX2 marketing blitz.
Only a few loose bits seem to be common among them, namely, a 512bit-wide memory bus (GDDR3, probably) and between 192 and 240 scalar processors for the core.
Things like the process technology (55nm, 65nm), TDP, performance, etc, are huge clouds so far.

Frankly, it's too soon to be speculating about a massively reworked architecture.
Even if it's a dual-core chip tied by an internal NF200-style bridge (different from a MCM-style layout, mind you...), i sincerely doubt that it's much more than G92 with a few extra execution units, double-precision (for CUDA, as it's mostly useless for graphics rendering right now).
The reason is that broad acceptance of DX10 in most games is still in its adolescence, and DX11 is still quite a few years ahead. DX10.1 support is also in doubt, and for good reason, as Nvidia doesn't seem to be interested in retro-actively aiding in game support for the competitor's current GPU's. It looks like DX10.1 will follow DX9's SM 2.0b into historic obscurity.