In early September some of our friends, who are familiar with NVIDIA’s plans told us that the highly-anticipated NV30 graphics processor will be unveiled at Comdex Fall show in Las Vegas late November. Now NVIDIA’s Derek Perez confirmed it at ExtremeTech. If you read our previous news-issues about the NV30, you probably remember that the VPU features 8 rendering pipelines with 2 TMUs on each one, beyond DirectX 9 shaders support, 256-bit DDR SDRAM memory, AGP 8x and a lot more technical innovations. The core-clock should be between 350 and 400MHz, while the memory frequency will be about 700MHz. Originally NVIDIA wanted to adopt DDR-II look-alike memory for their NV30 based graphics cards, however, since JEDEC still has not approved the appropriate standard, the company has to go with the DDR-I memory. The yield of the NV30 is not going to be very high due to a very complex design and new manufacturing technology, thus, the company may launch a lower-clocked version of their most powerful and feature-rich graphics processor. It does make sense in the current situation, since NVIDIA has to compete with the arch-rival ATI Technologies not only in terms of performance, but also in terms of features and prices. After ATI will roll-out a number of DirectX 9 supporting RADEON 9500-series of products in mid-October for $179 and $219, NVIDIA will not be able to offer a graphics chip with the same features and price. As a result, they will try to play with two versions of the NV30, offering them to different customers. Mr. Perez said that the company was considering an early-morning press conference. This phrase makes me think that when the sun rises in Las Vegas on November 18, so does the NV30. I should also remind you that according to the unofficial information, NV30 based graphics cards will be available for sale almost right after the announcement. Source: x-bit labs
