We have already told you that NVIDIA is planning to release its NV35 graphics processors in the second quarter this year and now are ready to share even more details about NVIDIA’s upcoming babe. Today I discovered at Tom’s Hardware web-site over here that the GPU has been taped out and is now even able to run some NVIDIA demos, including a new version of the Dawn demo with three sexy elfs instead of one.

Although the tape out itself does not mean really a lot, as semiconductor companies usually work with at least a couple of different versions of its chips before starting the mass production, the fact that the chip is able to perform NVIDIA’s pretty complex demo software sounds quite promising. It seems that NVIDIA is ready to start making the NV35 GPUs in quantity as it looks like the GPU is fully-functional already, while engineers are finalizing PCB designs for actual graphics cards.

X-bit labs informed you back a couple of days ago that the NV35 implements several modifications made in order to boost performance, improve yield and correct all possible and impossible erratas found in the original NV30 (aka GeForce FX 5800) chip. With just 5 million of transistors more compared to the NV30, I doubt the chip will really bring us new levels of performance, but I assume that NVIDIA has improved at least those functions that are awfully slow on the GeForce FX 5800 now. Reportedly NV35 will have 256-bit memory bus what should donate you a substantial performance gain over the current GeForce FX 5800 Ultra hardware simply because of memory bandwidth, even not because of the graphics processor itself.

At the moment I have no details about prices of the NV35-based graphics cards, but my common sense tells me that even the high-end graphics cards for consumers is not going to exceed $399 mark.

The official launch of the NV35 GPU will happen in May this year, according to unofficial information.