Sources among graphics cards manufacturers claim that a number of companies plan to showcase their NV36- and NV38-based graphics cards at Computex Taipei 2003 in late September. The NV36 is believed to be a successor of the NV31 also known as the GeForce FX 5600, whereas the NV38 is a follower of the NV35 aka the GeForce FX 5900 GPU.

In case NVIDIA and its add-in-board partners only showcase the NV36 and NV38 products in late September behind closed doors, we will only see the actual products powered by these graphics processors in October or later. This leads us to conclude that there will be no next-generation NV40 products this calendar year since no NVIDIA’s AIB partners want to release two high-end products in one quarter due to very obvious business reasons. Additionally, we should also remember about 6-month product cycle followed by both leading graphics companies.

To sum up, NVIDIA will renew its products lineup this October or November, just as NVIDIA’s Investor Relations VP Mike Hara claimed early this Summer. The actual availability of the graphics cards should happen in 5-6 months after the GeForce FX 5600 and GeForce FX 5900-series' first appearance.

ATI Technologies plans to release its code-named R360 and RV360-based products in September, little bit earlier than the rival. In this case I also would not suggest that ATI’s code-named R420 will show up this year, even though there are still some unconfirmed talks about such announcement among various sources.