NVIDIA has not returned any enquiries on the report concerning memory bus of its value GeForce FX 5900-based graphics card. Last week a French web-site Clubic.com said that the GeForce FX 5900 Value will have 128-bit bus and 128MB of DDR SDRAM memory, whereas its more powerful brethren, the GeForce FX 5900 and the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra boast with 256-bit memory bus and 128 or 256MB of memory.

NVIDIA’s recently announced GeForce FX 5900 Ultra graphics solution is clocked at 450MHz for the core and 850MHz for 256-bit DDR SDRAM.  The product is equipped with VIVO functions and will be priced at 499 Euros or Dollars. When it comes to the market in June it will be accompanied with the GeForce FX 5900 graphics card with 128MB of memory and 399 Euros or Dollars price. I do not know whether the core and memory speeds will be different for the parts. Even later this year, in July, according to preliminary information, NVIDIA will launch a USD/EUR 299 graphics card based on the same NV35 processor. We still do not know whether it will feature 256-bit bus for memory, however, the mentioned web-site claims that it will not.

In fact, the performance gap between the GeForce FX 5900 and the GeForce 5600 Ultra is very large. Keeping in mind that the GeForce FX 5800 was bounded by NVIDIA’s CEO himself, the company definitely needs a product that will fill the gap between the mentioned solutions. It is logical to offer the NV35 with 128-bit DDR SDRAM for that purpose because of numerous reasons:

• It will offer substantially higher performance compared to the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra;
• It will have the performance comparable or higher than that of the GeForce FX 5800, but for $299 at this time;
• It will not be as fast as other GeForce FX 5900-based graphics cards, hence, it will never affect their sales (we remember how the GeForce4 Ti4200 practically overshadowed the GeForce4 Ti4400 what caused the latter to disappear);
• The yield of the NV35 GPU should be high, I assume based on a statement made by NVIDIA’s CEO, hence, the company is able to afford selling the NV35 in the specified market segment;

As a result, this Summer NVIDIA will offer the following products in various market segments:

• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra – 499 Euro (ESP confirmed by NVIDIA);
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 – 399 Euro (ESP confirmed by NVIDIA);
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Value – 299 Euro (ESP confirmed by NVIDIA);
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra – 199 Euro (ESP confirmed by NVIDIA);
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 ~ 149~169 Euro;
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra ~ 149 Euro (ESP confirmed by NVIDIA);
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 ~ 99~129 Euro (ESP confirmed by NVIDIA).
• NVIDIA GeForce4 MX with AGP 8x ~ Under 99 Euro (ESP confirmed by NVIDIA).

As you see, it is logical to offer the GeForce FX 5900 Value with 128-bit memory bus since on the one hand it will still offer very high performance even though it will be cheaper to make; on the other hand, those, who want to have a very powerful solution will go with more expensive graphics cards.