nVidias næste generation

3DCenter.org har kigget nærmere på nVidias næste generation af grafikprocessorer, for det første halvår af 2004. Der er blandt andet masser af information om NV40, og dets brødre, NV41 og NV45, forskellen på de tre ligger i interfacet, NV40 er til AGP 8x, NV41 benytter en såkaldt "Bridge" til PCI Express, mens NV45 er et rent PCI Express x16 grafikkort.

Here nVidia surely doesn't want to stay behind and so they developed a PCI Express Bridge, which is soldered as an extra chip on the graphics board. This converts the AGPx8 signals of the graphics chip in PCI Express x16 signals - with which the graphics board can have a PCI Express x16 interface, even if the actual graphics chip is AGPx8. This chip is ready at nVidia and will be used for the current AGPx8 graphic cards to make them capable of PCI Express.

However the nVidia-graphics chips, which will be equipped with that PCI Express Bridge, get special code names, even though the graphics chips remain the same. The code name of the NV40 with the PCI Express Bridge will be NV41. This chip will be entirely identical to the NV40, with nVidia only adding an extra PCI Express Bridge chip to the graphics board manufacturers' delivery.



All succeeding chips of the NV4X-series will carry only internal PCI Express interfaces, including the NV45, which will be the refresh chip of the NV40/NV41 chips. With the delay of the NV40 the NV45 will come quite fast after it into the market, supposedly in the first half of the year. This will probably result in a similarity of events compared to the original GeForceFX series, where the NV35-chip (GeForceFX 5900 /Ultra/XT/SE) came also only a few months after the NV30 (GeForceFX 5800 /Ultra) into the market ;-).

Læs hele artiklen her: http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/2004/01-27_b_english.php