Nvidia Mystery: G70 die very large - hiding RSX's true capability?

[Guest]

It seems that the G70 / GeForce 7800 GPU is a very large chip - perhaps
larger than what would be expected from a 24 pixel pipeline part.

The die size of G70 is 330mm2 - the speculation is, this is consistant
with a 32 pixel pipeline part. It seems that the current G70 ~ GeForce
7800 is not fully utilizing all of this space, in order to keep chip yields
high. Nvidia can sell G70 GPUs with only 24 pixel pipelines working, and 8
deactivated or defective. for now, it is about having redundancy. much
like the Cell microprocessor for PlayStation3 only making use of 7 out of
the 8 SPE cores.
chips that do not have all of their pipelines or cores working are therefore
not garbage but can be used in product.

this leads to the RSX - the PlayStation3 GPU which is based heavily on G70.
It is now speculated that the RSX will have 28, or even all 32 pixel
pipelines working, whereas in the current G70, only 24 are working.

that is the point of this post - that Nvidia is holding back what their new
GPU is capable of - which will be fully used in a new card (i.e 7800 Ultra)
and in Sony's new console (PS3). now I will provide the sources for this
speculation which is really not my own personal speculation

http://www.beyond3d.com/#news24313
http://www.ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=53384
http://www.tinyurl.com/dfrch
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24411

 

[emolsen]

and in Sony's new console (PS3). now I will provide the sources for this

speculation which is really not my own personal speculation

If Nvidia is only using 24 pipes to keep yields good, I can't imagine them
being able to use all 32 (or even 28) in the PS3. Even accounting for
economy of scale, Sony is going to have issues keeping the cost of
the PS3 under control. The cell, blu-ray, less then "good' yields on
the rsx, wi-fi, etc all add up.