We found out that chip that use to be codenamed G84 will end up with much higher frequencies than we originally expected. G84 based Geforce 8600GTS, a top of the mainstream offer will end up clocked at 675 MHz core. We still don’t know the memory clock but we are sure that Nvidia plans to use the GDDR 3 memory with speeds higher than 1600 MHz, if not even higher.
G84 will
be fastest clocked chip from Nvidia to date and the clock comes in such a high
speed only thanks to the 80 nanometre marchitecture. G80 works at at default at
575 MHz but G80 is 90 nanometre, not 80 as G84.
This is very close to the limit
of the technology as you can not clock 80 nanometre chips at much higher frequency
than 700 Mhz. Obviously Nvidia has to think about shrinking the chip to 65
nanometre but this won’t happen anytime soon as least not that we know off.
We already said here that the launch date is April, middle of the month.