NVIDIA Fermi pushed to March?
updated 12:25 pm EST, Mon December 28, 2009
Flaws push NVIDIA Fermi past CES
NVIDIA's delay for Fermi will put it in March, video card makers said Monday. The company had acknowledged a push back to the first quarter of the year, but tips to DigiTimes now have the launch of cards based on the new chipsets moved to the very end of that period. The first part would be a mid-range chipset known for now as the GF!00 while a true high-end part, the GF104, wouldn't arrive until the spring.
The company would leave the GTS 250 and lower cards to fend off AMD's Radeon cards at the mid-to-low range until Fermi replacements exist.
AMD isn't expected to remain silent during the period and in late January or early February is slated to launch the Radeon HD 5670 and 5570 for the mainstream as well as the 5450 for the low end. Present-day Radeon HD 5000 chips are often substantially faster than their NVIDIA-made counterparts, which use an aging design.
The schedule if true promises to dictate some of the computer upgrade cycle as many desktop and notebook manufacturers depend on NVIDIA for their performance parts. Fermi is not only intended to promote video cards as general-purpose computing devices but is the first NVIDIA architecture to support DirectX 11 features in hardware as well as their OpenGL equivalents. AMD's current design isn't as ambitious for non-visual tasks but already supports the newer graphics standards.
