The chances of the next-generation graphics products to reach store shelves this calendar year were not big at all and now they are equal to zero. Both leading companies have never commented on the rumours about NV40 or R420 graphics chips, even though unofficial stories built castles in the sky about the upcoming processors and their power.

A senior executive at ATI told me one day: “We do not need new graphics architecture this year”; a week after the conversation Mr. Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, said during the quarter conference call that “Now ii is not a time to talk about next generation products…”

Based on such claims from the companies themselves and considering the rumours collected by this web-site, neither ATI nor NVIDIA are ready to roll-out powerful next-generation VPUs this year. There is absolutely no difference between the possible reasons of the postponement; we should take it as a fact and nothing more.

According to the information from the same web-site that watches all the rumours all the time from all around the web, the NV40 will have 8x2 architecture, include 175 million of transistors and will be equipped with 1500MHz memory. The target clocking of the chip is 600MHz. The part has not been taped out yet, according to the source, despite of the earlier claims.

ATI’s R420 VPU is expected to have 12x1 architecture, blazing core-speeds and skyrocketing memory. There is no information about its tape out, but I would doubt about its successful silicon implementation at this point.

The fourth generation graphics processors will support additional functionality of Pixel and Vertex Shaders 3.0 pushing the limits of 3D even further. But this will only happen next year, we should add...