by Anton Shilov
01/05/2003 | 05:37 PM
NVIDIA and its partners seem to be a bit ahead of the final schedule with their GeForce FX graphics processors and devices. As our sources revealed, Club3D that is based in Holland as well as some other vendors are likely to start selling the GeForce FX-based graphics cards by the end of this month. Currently there is no information in regards the pricing, but be sure that the GeForce FX is not going to be cheap.
What is very interesting, Club3D and maybe also the other vendors will start to sell the graphics cards equipped with 256MB of DDR-II SDRAM memory. This definitely conditions the high price that it rumoured to reach up to 500 or even 600 Euros. According to our sources, the first GeForce FX-based graphics cards with 256MB of memory will run at 500/1000MHz fore core and memory.<%BANNER[article]%>
I can hardly remember a game that can take advantage of 256MB of on-board memory at present. So, at first there will be no need for such huge frame-buffer, nevertheless, such graphics cards will definitely be able to live a little bit longer than those equipped with 128MB of memory. I have no idea whether you should pay a fortune for extra DDR-II SDRAM, but I would like to point out that eventually computer games will take advantage of 256MB frame-buffer.
I have no idea about the quantities of the first batch of the GeForce FX graphics cards, but given that the official timeframe for such products is still February, do not expect that the first cards will be widely available and there will be enough of them.
PS. I remember the days we were told that the GeForce3 will cost an arm and a leg, however these cards were finally available for much more reasonable price.