by Anton Shilov
12/26/2007 | 11:51 PM
While Advanced Micro Devices publicly releases details concerning its products due in the short term, discrete graphics chip market leader Nvidia Corp. remains tight-lipped regarding its products until very short till launch. There are rumours floating around the Web claiming that Nvidia plans to update its family of products sometime in February, though, it is completely unclear what exactly is set to be unveiled.
One of the market rumours claims that Nvidia plans to release its Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT graphics product for mainstream market in mid-February. For some reason, the web-site that reports about the new product, which it names G98/D9P, uses a slide from Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT presentation with chips carrying old Nvidia Corp.’s logotype to reaffirm credibility of the news-story.
Some other reports suggest that Nvidia prepares to release its Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS graphics card for mainstream market in early 2008 to compete in the mainstream segment of graphics adapters. The rumoured product is projected to be based on the code-named G92 chip with 96 unified shader processors, sport 192-bit memory bus and carry 384MB of memory onboard.
Yet another story reads that Nvidia develops yet another dual-chip graphics card, which is projected to be called GeForce 9800 GX2 and carry D9E code-name. The product is also expected to be formally announced in mid-February and re-enable support of 4-way SLI (quad SLI) technology.
In fact, D9M, D9P and D9E are not code-names of exact chips, but represent 9th generation solutions for mainstream (M), performance (P) and enthusiast (E) desktop (D) markets.
While those reports are read separately, some may even consider them as correct, however, when compiled, the rumours seem to contradict each other.
Earlier this year it was reported, based on unofficial sources as well, that Nvidia aims to begin transition to a DirectX 10.1-compatible GeForce 9 architecture with a high-end product sometime in February ‘08, while mainstream offerings will be available at a later date, sometime in Summer.
Perhaps, Nvidia is on track to release single-chip GeForce 9600 GT for $150 - $200 market as well as single-chip and dual-chip GeForce 9800 graphics cards that fit into $400 - $650 price-range in February. But in that case there would be no sense to release GeForce 8800 GS product, as currently available offerings would fulfill the needs of mainstream customers.
It should be noted that it hardly makes sense to release only GeForce 9600 GT with DirectX 10.1, as it will inevitably cause confusion of customers and slowdown of GeForce 8800- and GeForce 8600-series graphics cards sales.
What makes sense for Nvidia to do early next year is to update the high-end lineup of its products with something that could be useful for current owners of the GeForce 8800 GTX or Ultra graphics boards. Maybe it will be GeForce 9800 GX2 that supports DirectX 10.1 along with a single-chip high-end product, but, in fact, a dual-chip GeForce 8800 GX2 based on a pair of G92 chips with only DirectX 10 support, will also attract a lot of interest of performance enthusiasts.
Nvidia did not comment on the news-story.