by Anna Filatova
05/31/2002 | 12:41 AM
Yesterday ExtremeTech, referring to some Hans Mosesmann, an analyst at Prudential Securities in San Francisco, posted really interesting info about NVIDIA planning to release 12 new graphics chips this autumn. Well, are you shocked? Relax now. Although this announcement looks really sensational at first sight, you will discover nothing strange about it if you take a closer look at it.
According to the guys, some time ago NVIDIA had a conference call and said there that in autumn they will release NV30. This chip will differ from the predecessors and will be manufactured by TSMC with 0.13micron technology. They also promised that NV30 would prove much faster than all existing products from NVIDIA’s competitors and would support AGP 8x. So, the analyst was evidently talking about NV30.<%BANNER[article]%>
Where does the magic number 12 come from then? Well, no mystery here: you know that NVIDIA is making bunches of new chips releasing new modifications. For instance, when they launched GeForce4 and GeForce4 MX there were 14 products announced altogether: 3 modifications of GeForce4 Ti, 3 GeForce4 MX, 2 GeForce4 Go, 4 Quadro4 XGL, 1 Quadro4 NVS and 1 Quadro4 Go GL. So, you shouldn’t be surprised with the number of NV30 based products coming,
The only thing that we can also expect from NVIDIA bearing in mind the "12", is the simultaneous announcement of the cheaper "NV30 MX" version of the chip with cut down features, which will be targeted for the mainstream market.