Page 1: Why the graphics card market may pause during 2009
Rumors are going around the graphics card industry like never before and every time a new generation is about to launch the stream of stories becomes thicker and thicker, and it far from easy to dig through all the possible facts that these reports may contain. What we all most certainly know though is that both AMD and NVIDIA are working on very powerful graphics circuits that will not only bring DirectX 11 but also considerably more crunching power to the table.
Even if the first rumored specifications of both AMD's and NVIDIA's new cards are quite impressive they are still unconfirmed, at the same time it is unclear when we will actually see any of them in stores. Not just because AMD and NVIDIA are reluctant to reveal any possible launch dates but also because they most likely don't know yet. Both AMD RV870 and NVIDIA's G300 (also known as GT300) will be made by TSMC and its new 40nm process. The problem is that the 40nm process has been problematic for TSMC and Radeon HD 4770, which is the first retail graphics cards using a 40nm graphics circuit, is hard to come by.
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 48x0 series was the first 40nm chips to be announced
If TSMC is in such strides to make a relatively simple chip like RV740 (826 million transistors) we do not dare to guess the yields of a high-end circuit like RV870 or G300 would get. NVIDIA's G300 is rumored to consist of almost three times as many transistors as RV740, around 2.4 billion transistors.
But even if TSMC would get things in order it will take another couple of months before AMD and NVIDIA can launch its new architecture, I.e. hard launch, and today the fourth quarter this year looks like the most plausible launch period.
Until then it has kept lips tight, at least if we consider the high-end models. NVIDIA is expected to get by on its GeForce GTX 285 and new single-PCB version of GTX 295, which could create a bigger than normal gap between current and coming generations.
As it turns out at least one graphics card manufacturer has no intention of waiting until the next generation graphics cards arrive, and develop its own solution for moving graphics performance to new levels today.
The company in question is ASUS and the card in question is a real beast called ASUS MARS GTX295.
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