GeForce 8 series
The GeForce 8 series supports 10-bit per channel display output, up from 8-bit on previous Nvidia cards.
This potentially allows higher fidelity color representation and separation on capable displays.
It now includes GPU-based hardware acceleration for decoding HD movie formats, post-processing of HD video for enhanced images, and optional High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) support at the card level.
Because of the reduced graphics performance of these cards, it is not suitable for intense 3D applications such as fast, high-resolution video games, however they could still play most games in lower resolutions and settings, making these cards (in particular the 8400 series) popular among casual gamers and HTPC (Media Center) builders without a PCI Express or AGP slot on the motherboard.
[5] It is quite different from the G86 used for the "first" 8400 GS, as the G98 features VC-1 and MPEG2 video decoding completely in hardware, lower power consumption, reduced 3D-performance and a smaller fabrication process.
[6] It has a larger amount of RAM, a significantly reduced 3D-performance, and is capable of DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.3 and Shader 4.1.
The 8800 series, codenamed G80, was launched on November 8, 2006, with the release of the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS for the high-end market.
[8] These newly updated models with the rebranded 8800 GS GPUs were announced by Apple on April 28, 2008.
It consists of 681 million transistors covering a 480 mm2 die surface area built on a 90 nm process.
The 8800 GTX also supports HDCP, but one major flaw is its older NVIDIA PureVideo processor that uses more CPU resources.
Originally retailing from $800 to $1000, most users thought the card to be a poor value, offering only 10% more performance than the GTX but costing hundreds of dollars more.
The 8800 GT, unlike other 8800 cards, is equipped with the PureVideo HD VP2 engine for GPU assisted decoding of the H.264 and VC-1 codecs.
Some manufacturers also make models with 1 GB of memory; and with large resolutions and big textures, one can perceive a significant performance difference in the benchmarks.
The performance (at the time) and popularity of this card is demonstrated by the fact that even as late as 2014, the 8800 GT was often listed as the minimum requirement for modern games developed for much more powerful hardware.
However, because the only 2 add-in partners producing this card (BFG and EVGA) decided to overclock it, this version of the 8800 GTS actually ran slightly faster than a stock GTX in most scenarios, especially at higher resolutions, due to the increased clock speeds.
Combined with a 650 MHz core clock and architectural enhancements, this gives the card raw GPU performance exceeding that of 8800 GTX, but it is constrained by the narrower 256-bit memory bus.
Shortly after their release, an incompatibility issue with older PCI Express 1.0a motherboards surfaced.
This could be considered a non-issue however, since the card itself could not even utilize the full capacity of the regular PCI Express 1.0 slots, there was no noticeable reduction in performance.
The source of the BIOS-flash workaround did not come from NVIDIA or any of their partners, but rather ASRock, a mainboard producer, who mentioned the fix in one of their motherboard FAQs.
[27] It was announced by Nvidia that some of their graphics chips have a higher than expected rate of failure due to overheating when used in particular notebook configurations.
Some major laptop manufacturers made adjustments to fan setting and firmware updates to help delay the occurrence of any potential GPU failure.
In late July 2008, Dell released a set of BIOS updates that made the laptop fans spin more frequently.
[28] As of mid-August 2008, Nvidia has not published any further details publicly, though it has been heavily rumored that most, if not all, of the 8400 and 8600 cards had this issue.
Normally found on mid-range laptops as an alternative solution to integrated graphics, the 8400M was designed for watching high-definition video content rather than gaming.
Various Acer Aspire and Sony VAIO laptop models featured 8400M GT GPUs.
The GeForce 8600M was offered in mid-range laptops as a mid-range performance solution for enthusiasts who want to watch high-definition content such as Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD movies and play then-current and some future games with decent settings.
The common failure of this chip in, amongst others, MacBook Pro's purchased between May 2007 and September 2008 were part of a class-action suit against nVidia which resulted in Apple providing an extended 4 year warranty related to the issue[32] after confirming that the issue was caused by the Nvidia chip themselves.
[33][34] This warranty replacement service was expected to cost nVidia around $150 to $200 million[35] and knocked over $3 billion off their market capitalisation after being sued by their own shareholders for attempting to cover the issue up.
This chipset is available on high-end laptops such as the Dell XPS M1730, Sager NP5793, and Toshiba Satellite X205.
[41] Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and CFO Marvin Burkett were involved in a lawsuit filed on September 9, 2008, alleging their knowledge of the flaw, and their intent to hide it.
