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Posted on 1/12/2002
UPDATE!!
Note: ES is in no way affiliated with GeoCities nor "FattyBurger"
GeForce 4 Pics
There has been a lot of controversy regarding this submission, it has been taken down from 1) X-Bit Labs and 2) CPU Times.
Here is the original posting from X-Bit Labs:
ALTHOUGH WE KNOW that Nvidia does not have any plans to continue its own six month cycle we have spotted some details about an upcoming solution set for spring 2002 known as NV25.
So this year, from high end Nvidia, we can only expect the overclocked ultra version, according to current plans. 128 MB of RAM can be expected and heavily clocked versions of both memory and GPU.
Here is how it may transpire.
NV25 will be technically the same card as NV20 aka Geforce 3 with an additional Vertex shader. Higher memory and chip clock may be expected but the only thing that will make a noticeable difference is the additional vertex shader. This was also easy to predict since the Xbox chip has two Vertex shaders and that chip can easily be reworked to be used in a PC.
This seems to lead to the conclusion that Microsoft helped Nvidia to make the additional PC chip for themselves at $200 million expense to the Great Satan of Software.
AT this moment all is very cloudy about Direct X 9 specs which should follow NV25, but sources told that there is a possibility that the NV25 will be 8.1 aka XP/XBox version of DirectX.
But I seriously suspect DX 9 compatibility and Nurbs, that are partially supported in Geforce 3.
So Nvidia seams to slow a bit down as it cannot be on a six month product cycle any more because of the large market they cover now – 3d cards for games, for professionals, chipsets, consoles etc.
They're silently moving to a one year cycle we reckon.
"Additional vertex shader will give more effects for developers to use in future games and will expand the nFINITE FX engine that should have unlimited effects. "
According to an article at The Inquirer the specifications of the GeForce 4 have been leaked:
"NV 25 will be called Geforce 4 and will have the 4600 mark -- if we are talking about fastest version. It will feature 128MB DDR with a 128bit bus. There is still no any specific clocking of the memory but we can say that it is likely to use 600 MHz memory.
Nvidia will continue to use Titanium brand on this card since lot of people recognise this as acronym for speed. Sources suggest that they will call these cards "Titanium version".
The Geforce 4 4600 could means Geforce 4 with 600 MHz RAM just like Geforce 3 TI 500 meant 500 MHz DDR memory. When I say 600 MHz RAM, I mean on 300 MHz DDR memory.
The big surprise for me was the clock speed of this new Geforce 4 chip. It should be clocked from 250 to 275 MHz according to the source, which implied that it is very hard for Nvidia to accomplish this 300 core due to the complexity of the chip.
The card will have support for AGP 8X, the sources added.
As for the slower version Geforce 4 4400 you should expect 64MB DDR at 64-bit also to be called "Titanium version". We still do not have much information about exact clock speeds or the memory of this chip.
NV 17 will use Geforce 4 MX brand. It is interesting to see that what we used to call Geforce 3 MX – the very own NV17 becomes Geforce 4 all of a sudden.
We also learned that the NV25 was sampled to manufacturers back in December of last year and card designs should get to the final stages real soon now.
We will see some announcements in February, while you can expect cards sometime in March - Cebit time.
The last thing is the launch date – "a nice lady from the parking lot " said that company will launch the product in the first week of February and we may add that it should take place on February the 5th but I should warn you that this timing may be changed at the last minute."
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