Well,

it looks retarded enough to be real. Look at those power chords!

I guess I better upgrade to that 1.2 kilowatt PSU.

If this is a one slot card, I want one!

I love/hate the last picture: the dude has a pretty decent slr camera, but he's using it to take the ubiquitous myspace-esque, lone dude in front of a bathroom mirror pic. Absolutely marvelous! Note to the digital age: let's try and figure out how to use timers on our expensive cameras.

Why does it have four power dongles. Does that frighten anyone else?

That better have HDMI and it better work with SP3 on the XP

Those four dongles come from two PCIe power connectors. Those are adapters.

If you figure 8-12 amp draw on each of those connectors (which is reasonable) given the gauge of the conductors, that means the graphics card may need north of 400 watts by itself.

Oh goody, we'll be seeing that one in a laptop soon... not!

This card is SO going into my conroe build... sikkkkKKKKK!

I can't wait until I see a system with 8 of those running in SLI.

In the future:

Each card renders a single pixel on screen!

Yes as I have read the recommended minimum power supply's are 400w for the GTS, 450 for the GTX and 800w for SLI(2 gfx cards). At those power requirement's quad SLI would be scary prospect.

And I really hope this generations cards make less noise, having to add a Zalman cooler to the cost of the videocard just to keep a quite computer sucks.

It is obvious that GPU is/will be more powerfull than CPU. And one day, who knows, maybe the PC will be the graphic card, and we just snap in CPU and RAM. :o)

Bah!

That IS NOT 4 POWER CONNECTORS -- as Maurs said, that's two power connectors on the card, and each has an "input" and an "output" on the Y-cable connected to it...so if your PSU only has one Molex connector left, you can power your GPU and a Hard drive.

And the "400W PSU, 800W for SLI" is a whole system estimate. It isn't up too much from the previous generation of cards (roughly 50-75Watts per card)...which is a lot...but it involves each graphics card consuming about 200Watts, not 400.

And quad-sli generally uses mobile GPU's stuck into the desktop PCI boards...so power requrements likely wouldn't jump up to 1600Watts.

You might want to take a closer look at the connectors on the ends of those Y cables - my eyes are pretty bad from furious masturbation, but they all look like male connectors to me, which kinda implies "feed me" ...

I also noticed it has two SLi bridge connectors, maybe it requires more bandwidth. Either way I want this card, it looks kick ass.

Uh EQC is right on a lot of aspects, except the quad-sli one. The 7950GX2 is two 7900GT's basically sandwiched together, not 2 mobile cores. Either way, the power consumption of a 7950GX2 is approx 150W, which isin't two bad considering its two graphics cards.

800W would be total system power, including mobo, cpu, graphics, all the fun stuff. I'm guessing a nice 700W PSU will be enough to run it, even if I estimate 250W for each card, which I can't see them surpassing no matter what they do because there would be no way to cool them. I assume those 4 molex would be removable and you can just use PCI-E, but I will have to look at more detailed specs anyways.

The G80 doesn't hit me as a true DX10 graphics card either due to the fact it doesn't use unified shader which is what DX10 is known for. Also, the odd number of memory is also weird, but it might be due to the weird memory bandwith that they use. Whether it'll net performance gains is yet to be seen.

I'm still waiting for the R600, whenever it will come out. Keep up the pics and commentary, I'll give whatever info I can to keep ya'll up to date. Nice pics though, looks like a heck of a card.

Man...my power bill is gonna skyrocket when i get one of those when i build my next computer.
All i can do is sit back and play CS: Source on my 6600GT AGP - THATS RITE AGP 8X BITCHES!!!!

i seriously need a new rig..

@ monkeybars:

I think just the word dongle scares me.

Finally, I've had enough of this DX10 foreplay. I'm ready for some action.

Anyone remember the "green" movement. Anyone? Using this GPU is the equivalent of buying an Escalade in the middle of a gasoline crisis. WTH??

Thanks for the correction on the 7950 Doughboy...I guess maybe I was remembering the 'original' quad SLI cards for Dell's uber system?

With regard to the power connectors...IIRC, each PCI-express power connector can handle 75 Watts maximum...so no matter how many molex connectors you plug into it, that's still just 75 Watts per PCI-e power connector. So, this card, at a maximum, can draw 150 Watts Plus whatever it draws through the motherboard (which I think is also between 70-100 Watts...) so this is at most a 200-250 Watt card assuming it maxes out all power connections.

Aaron Martin-Colby says:

Look at those power chords!

Reading that makes me want to play Guitar Hero.

THa

That card better fit in my PS3...

Imagine, Dual 1.5Ghz Video cards, AND THEN, you return to your work place where you are still using a 400MHz processor for data entry bullsh*t....

I am going to have to disagree with EQC. Were you even building computers before the video card power connector? Well, that connector needs 2 12V rails, which you CAN NOT GET from one incoming power line. If you connect one of those as an 'output'... well, /I/ will laugh when your new video card dies. This link is by no means difinitive, but it should help explain: http://www.spodesabode.com/content/article/pciepower/2

Most power supplies come with PCI-E power connectors for graphics cards now. But not all of them do, so to get the proper power into that bad boy, you can run 2 normal molex connectors into a combiner (like the kid in the pictures above has done) and get the right amount of power. This card just needs a LOT of power. Two PCI-E connectors is 4 molex plugs. It's just what you need.

... If you don't have the PCI-E off a PSU, then you must have just emerged from the caves...

Most high-end enthusiast level PSU's come with at least 2 12V rails rated at 18A each, the PSU that I'm getting has 4 12V rails rated at 18A with each 12V rail powering a seperate PCI-E... you do the math, 12V x 18A is how many watts?

Also, even if he does that, how will the card die? He's not over-voltaging it... he's not short-circuiting it, at worst there isin't enough voltage and it won't even power up. How does that equal a dead card? Are you just a high school student posing as an EE?

And if you can afford this graphics card, which will retail at 600 bucks when it comes out, you can goddam afford a 100 dollar PSU. What old PSU put out enough wattage for a card of this caliber + the rest of the system? You know how much power a watercooling loop uses? How about a Peltier cooler? CPU with a modest OC? HDD drives, optical drives, fans, they all add up...

jrronimo: I've looked a bit more closely, and I believe you are correct: it does indeed appear folks were correct about each PCI-e power connector being fed by two molex. I had simply assumed it was similar to the "Y" connector provided with many fans, hard drives, and old molex-fed graphics cards -- a connector with one input (from the PSU) and 2 outputs (one for the device, one for another device).

Obviously, with gendered molex cables, it would be impossible to "connect one as an output" unless it was meant to be. Of course, if I was too dumb to figure that out, I might just look at the pretty pictures in the manual and notice that no soldering was necessary.

The point most people have about the 4 molex connectors isn't the number, but about "how much power does that card need" -- As Doughboy pointed out, the power required is perfectly feasible for a single 12V rail...and a single rail can easily have 2 wires coming off of it...

At an absolute maximum, the card itself can draw 75W*2 for the PCI-e connectors, plus up to 75W through the socket on the MoBo. That's 235W if it maxes out every available connection...and quite feasibly, if the card maxxed out at 151W it'd still need that 2nd power connector.

To be fair, jrronimo, since you went ahead and questioned my building of computers for some reason, I have built precisely one computer for myself (and a few others for use at work...I'm a lowly grad student). I built my computer in the beginning of 2004, and it's still my main computer. I say "main" only because my 1999 466Mhz beast still sits under my desk, fully operational though rarely used. The "main rig" runs a Northwood 2.8GHz P4. My uber graphics card is an Nvidia FX 5200. I do not game, and I only needed so much power under the GPU hood to watch some Over The Air HDTV with a tuner card. I stay 'up' on the latest technology, but am conservative in my spending -- I don't even get cable or have a cell phone because I know they are overpriced for what I would get out of them.

woops...This card can draw 225 Watts if it maxxes out every available connection.

2 geforce 8800gtx with sli is will unstoppable.

Yeah i'm Gonna need a nuclear Generater for all this power. Look at the state of those towels in the picture, he needs to wash them.