The GT300/Fermi Thread

[kadozer]

Quoted right from Charlie's mouth.

The statement is false. Large system builders don't care about extreme high end cards and filter most of them down to their boutique high performance shops like Dell's Alienware and HP's VoodooPC. These higher-end shops care less about compliance since their clients aren't concerned with having the systems run in datacenters, work computers, etc.

There are no potential problems 300W+ cards would cause other than on the power supply feeding them. The PCI-E slot is designed to provide up to 75W of power and no more while power connectors aren't an issue either since a pair of 8-pins can provide up to 300W plus the 75W from the slot for 375W.

As for board partners, they aren't concerned either. They can still claim a card is compatible with the PCI-E interface BUT they won't be able to put the PCI-Express logo on their packaging not claim compliance in their documentation.

All in all, not a big deal.

I always wondered this too, but I suppose it was important to AMD for the 5970 since they purposely crippled the speeds to avoid going over 300w. There were even reports of delays specifically for that reason. Its gotta be a big deal no?