Nvidia starts NV3X buildup
No rest for ATI in graphics wars
By Mike Magee: Wednesday 24 July 2002, 16:23
ATI MUST, of course, get its skates on in quite a narrow window of opportunity to sell the R300 before NV30 makes an appearance on the market.
At the recent ATI launch in London, it seems that review cards were in short supply and the system integrators there were also waiting for boards to fully test in their systems.
Most of the system integrators remained confident that ATI could get enough cards to them for them to sell systems in the run up to the lucrative Yuletide season.
That means ATI has got to start shipping parts very soon and have all their ducks lined in a row, as the fairground saying goes.
As we reported from Computex in June, NV30 taped out in early June and we expect Nvidia to narrowly miss the opportunity to sell into the market by that date.
The NV30 pre-hype has already started, however. Nvidia is already briefing journalists on what they can expect in products based on this technology, under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), and there's even some info available up on the Nvidia web site in the form of this eleven page PDF.
We didn't expect Nvidia to lay off the opposition while the window of opportunity was open for ATI, and these must surely just be the first counterblasts we'll see during the summer.
