NV48 is NV45 with 512MB RAM

Spinner

Nvidia will introduce a new graphics card codenamed NV48. It's hardly an exciting release, as the new card will simply use NV45 chips with 512MB of memory instead of the typical 256MB.

If you remember, and bear with us, dear reader, NV45 is NV40 with BR2 bridge so NV48 is bridge of the bridged card, it sure isn't a native. We could say or describe it as an update of an updated marchitecture. But we won't do that. Oops! We just did.

NV48 will keep the Geforce 6800 series name and if we talk about the NV48 Ultra we will end up with 6800 Ultra 512 MB card. Gainward already announced such a card and it hopes to demo it at the soon to be upcoming CeBIT, or hangover as my dad says.

Innovation at its best. Not!

Source: The Inquirer

Nosferatu

Isn't it rare for the card to even use all of it's 256MB RAM?

Spinner

Nosferatu wrote:

Isn't it rare for the card to even use all of it's 256MB RAM?

I don't know, probably. But then again, all I ever play is pacman.

lemonlime

Man, that DDR3 is not cheap, I'd rather they invest in making GPU optimizations, and other 'useful' changes to the architecture

madmat

Supposedly the "High Detail" settings in Doom 3 will fill a 512MB frame buffer although I've never heard confirmation that it's a fact. With the new expansion pack for Doom 3 coming out soon the Uber Geeks out there that have all the latest and greatest gear will be able to set the details to 11 with no slow downs associated with the buffer hitting system memory.

You want to talk sheer overkill, imagine an SLI setup consisting of two 512MB PCI-E 6800 Ultras...it's enough to make you either want to cry or laugh your a** off depending upon how you look at it.

Axtumanu

I think it was confirmed at release that the Ultra Quality setting on Doom 3 uses 512MB of ram for video, but the diference between that and High Quality is barely noticable, they only use uncompressed textures.