Selected Nvidia partners will unveil Nvidia's next-generation GF100 based flagship, the Geforce GTX 480 at Cebit, which runs from March 2nd to March 6th. Official release is expected towards the end of March, though widespread availability might slip to April, assuming there are no more mishaps.

More details next page.

The new ASUS laptops are going to be equipped with NVIDIA Optimus Technology that allows seamless transition between discrete and integrated graphics for enhanced viewing and longer battery life. The notebooks are scheduled to be available from March.

The GPGPU revolution is well underway, and the next stop seems to be the lucrative server arena. From an information point of view, a vast majority of servers are the ideal applications for GPGPU acceleration, as they are often required to perform repetitive processing. There is no doubt GPGPUs can accelerate specific server processes several times over CPUs.

However, so far, the only drawback has been the form factor of server systems. Servers are clearly designed for CPU usage, with no real space to fit in graphics cards. It is possible to replace the form to fit in PCI-e GPUs. This is not an option many server data centers are likely to opt for, however. Instead, the two year timeline given by AMD might simply allude to the availability of Fusion APUs.

More next page.

Update: Nvidia have now announced on their Twitter page that GF100 will be branded Geforce GTX 480 and Geforce GTX 470.

Long rumoured to be codenamed GT300, with branding as the GTX 300 series, Expreview is now reporting that Nvidia has named GF100 as Geforce GTX 480 for the top model and GTX 470 for the more affordable, cut down variant.

Release is on track for late Q1 2010, i.e. end March, barring further delays. Why Nvidia would seemingly skip a generation is unknown, though an upgrade from GTX 285 to GTX 480 does sound psychologically more significant than to GTX 380. Considering GF100 is a revolutionary architecture for Nvidia, we could even expect a completely new branding scheme, like they did for the GT200 series.

More next page.

TSMC's Senior VP of Operations, Mark Liu, has mentioned that TSMC's troubled 40nm process is now of the same quality as the mature 65nm process. The chamber mismatch issue which dropped the yields of the HD 5800 series to a reported 40% have now been resolved, and yields are recently rumoured to be between 60% and 80%.

Mr. Liu did not delve into further details. Yield rates are a win-win-win situation for everyone involved. ATI will be able to ship more GPUs at lower manufacturing costs, customers will get widespread availability and lower prices.

More next page.

Fudzilla has reported the existence of a dual-GPU version of Nvidia's upcoming GF100 in April, roughly one month after the single-GPU GF100 launch, if all goes well and A3 is the final stepping. However, is such a mammoth product, the dual-GF100, actually feasible?

Earlier rumours pointed to a TDP of 180-200W for the single GPU GF100, but the recent demonstration in CES 2010 saw a 8 pin + 6 pin PCI-e power configuration, suggesting a TDP of somewhere between 225W and 300W. Since then, SemiAccurate have reported the actual TDP to be a rumoured 280W.

More next page.

ATI's next release, the Radeon HD 5830, previously rumoured for late January has now reportedly been pushed back to February 5th - around the same time as the release of the HD 5400/5500 series.

A substantial gap in price and performance has existed between the HD 5770 and the HD 5850 since November. With the HD 5850's availability issues, the price gap has increased even further. Today, the HD 5770 1GB retails at an average of $169, with the HD 5850 all the way up to $299.

More next page.

Much like the Radeon HD 4890 last generation, ATI is rumoured to be preparing a refresh for its Cypress GPU. Details are unavailable at this stage. Whether it will be a die shrink, increase in shader counts, or just clock speed optimizations (ala HD 4890) is unknown.

The HD 5800 refresh should come in right after the GF100 as a direct competition. If GF100 does end up competitively priced, ATI have a significant price cut buffer in the short term, with the refresh taking over within a couple of months.

Next up on AMD GPG's relentless release schedule is Cedar - the entry level GPU that will cover ATI Radeon HD 5400 and 5500 series. The card is expected to feature 200 shaders, which is an impressive boost from the 80 shaders featured in the Radeon HD 4300/4500 series.

Arab Hardware have pictured a low profile card that is powered by a Cedar GPU. Do note that this is an engineering sample from way back in October 2009, and the final heatsink and appearance are likely to change.


More next page.