Wheres the 512 mb cards as promised?

[MeanerModder]

When I went to the geforce lan in sf earlier this year where they announced the new 6800 series they told us there would be a 512 mb version of the card along with sli. . Well? Has anyone heard rumors of these cards? I'm beginning to think that with sli they've decided to just scrap the 512 mb cards. They said they would be out in the fall. As usual with these companies Its promise promise promise then they deliver when it suits them if they do at all. :santa2:

[wanab]

ya, maybe by next fall we will see. this fall next fall it all the same they seem to think. the real problem is making it profitable. they cant get the margins they want so they no make. :beer:

[TUK101]

It could just be a marketing ploy to get us PC enthusiests who want the absolute best fps possible in our games to upgrade to SLI. Everybody already knows that it is a fact that Doom3 cant run as well as possible until you have 512mb of video memory. Well if they only sell a video card with maximum amount of ram at 256mb but have the SLI option to X2 the cards and memory then it is one way to get people to upgrade. And it is a natural reaction to anything that you spend a ton of money on to brag it up to your buddies as to how well it works. I got into computers right when SLI was winding down with the 3DFX cards, (my first card was a Voodoo 3 3000, very hot card in its day). I remember when games didnt even run that well at all unless you had one of those setups. In PCgamer they said that the 512mb cards where still months off when they reviewed Doom 3 back in July or August.

[lilxvietxboi]

Arg, the only people who need 512mb memory is for CAD'ers/modelers! Well doom3 might need the extra 256mb but thats doom 3... and i think that hl2 has better graphics than doom3(all it is is lighting and shadows)... not to turn this into a hl2/d3 flame war... just saying to achieve a high level of graphics, we do not need a large amount of memory! my friend plays hl2 fine with his 64mb card(i think he has a ti4200) on high but low resolution!(granted he is still running dx8.1) but yeah..

there ARE 512 cards, just not ati/nvidia 512 cards. Even my local retail store has a couple made by "3D Labs" Wildcat VP990 512MB whatever that is but it is geared torwards the workstation like the quadro/firegl line.

my 2 cents

edit:
http://www.3dlabs.com/products/product.asp?prod=293
There! a 640MB with 512bit (yes 512bit!) bandwithd card(and what seems to look like a massive "vga silencer" wannabe as the cooler...

This line was and still is true.. "Megabytes isn't everything!"
ex a geforce fx 5200 256mb will NOT beat my geforce 6800 128 mb or even a gfx 5600 128mb

[consumer9000]

Do you realize how expensive it would be to make a double sided, 256bit GDDR3 6800 board? Unless they come out with BGA modules twice as dense, it is unlikely we will see anything of the sort until the next generation of ATI and nvidia parts come to market. Even then, with the multiboard SLI push, it will be profitable for them to simply force hardcore junkies to buy two 256 boards!

[TollhouseFrank]

here comes the crux of the situation.

ease: it is easier to write a driver for a single peice of hardware than a dual setup.

ease: it is easier on a card to only do 'half' the work, and in pairs, 2 cards can do upwards of twice the processing power (from what i've seen on tomshardwareguide)

price: a 512MB card costs what... nearly 600-700 currently?

price: 2x 256MB cards costs 300-400+300-400 = 600-800 for nearly 2x the power

right now, i think dual card is the way to go, or even 'dual-core' a card, so that 1 GPU isn't doing everything, but the load handling is split between 2 (or 4 in SLI!) GPU's.

[MeanerModder]

I disagree with the notion all you need is 256 mbs. From what I read even the best cards use everybit of 256 mbs and virtual mem. The mem is stacked up according to priority with lower priority going to virtual. The difference comes when you have the extra mem to access at twice or threes times the speed of virtual. This also eases stress on main sys and the juggling of mem. When purchasing cards that cost 4-5 hundred dollars it would be worth a couple hundred to have the extra life the extra mem would present as more demanding games are coming. By the way of course we're all aware that there are 3d cards at 512mb . The thread is about the cards promised by nvidia. Also SLI is only really helping in high resolution settings. In the settings most gamers use it makes little diff in fps.

[jtlee75]

Do you realize how expensive it would be to make a double sided, 256bit GDDR3 6800 board? Unless they come out with BGA modules twice as dense, it is unlikely we will see anything of the sort until the next generation of ATI and nvidia parts come to market. Even then, with the multiboard SLI push, it will be profitable for them to simply force hardcore junkies to buy two 256 boards!


Samsung has released info on 512bit gddr3 said mid 2005. Thats all I remember. I will post the link if I find it again.
linky (http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20041209_130044.html)

[CandymanCan]

Do you realize how expensive it would be to make a double sided, 256bit GDDR3 6800 board? Unless they come out with BGA modules twice as dense, it is unlikely we will see anything of the sort until the next generation of ATI and nvidia parts come to market. Even then, with the multiboard SLI push, it will be profitable for them to simply force hardcore junkies to buy two 256 boards!


Yea but even if its expensive, they will just crank the price up for it to cover the costs.

It would ben ice to have 512mb cards tho. I remember when the 9700-9800pro's came out they said they were ganna have 256mb versions they still dont, then like years later the 9800pro started seeing 256mb.