Posted on Friday, December 05 2008 @ 20:58 CET by Thomas De MaesschalckThe Zotac GeForce GTX 260² features a custom blue PCB but apart from that, the card looks very similar to the P654 PCB design from NVIDIA. One of the first things that stands out on the naked card is the new aluminum support brace around the GPU, the single-sided memory array, and altered power circuitry.
Based on brand-new P654 reference design, the latest version of GeForce GTX260 Graphic Card utilizes 26.5CM PCB. All the 14 video memories are put on the front side of PCB, with 10 layers of PCB design. Previous P651 PCB shared by GeForce GTX260/280 was 14 layers. Previous version of GTX260’s features 3+2 phase power module (The 3 CSP sealed Volterra VT1195SF MULTIPHASE chip would be most eye-catching).Expreview says the card will start shipping in January 2009. The card' uses the same clockspeeds as the 65nm version, but should run at a cooler temperature, use less power and overclock better. Furthermore, it's cheaper to produce so you might get some nice price cuts.
New P654 power modules has upgraded to 4+2 phase, equipping solid-state capacitor, magnetism shield inductance and MOSFET. Where the two 6Pin are connected features a large input inductance separately. Therefore, the reduced difficulties in design will bring down the cost.
The GT200b of GeForce GTX260 will be renamed to be “G200-103-B2” instead of 65nm “G200-103-A2”. The “B” means newest 55nm processing is used. The number of its stream processors remains as 216. The video memory uses Samsung K4J52324QH-HJ1A chip. The specs are 896MB/448bit, with default frequency of 575/2000MHz and memory bandwidth of 112GB/s.
Here are a couple of pictures of the new card, note that the back side of the card is now empty and that it features a cooler designed by Cooler Master.
Here's a photo that compares the current GeForce GTX 260 P651 PCB design with the new GeForce GTX 260 P654 PCB design:
