55nm GT200 in December, 40nm GT212 and RV870 Next Year

It seems that NVIDIA will add a new card to its GT200 series in December, and this card will be a 55nm one. It is expected to be cooler and faster, while also clocked a little higher than the current GT200 cards. Moreover, some would also expect the green company to pair it in a dual card. The news hasn't been confirmed yet, but it seems solid enough, especially with a possible graphics card roadmap for 2009 published by hardspell.

According to the news, NVIDIA will unveil the 55nm card in an effort to move closer to ATI's position, which currently has on the market some graphics solutions that hold the performance crown. As we have already reported, NVIDIA is working on 40nm chips as well, which are expected to hit the market in March 2009. The second quarter of the next year is the most likely time frame for the introduction of the cards.

On the other hand, ATI is also moving to the 40nm manufacturing process and will probably have the first cards under the new fabrication launched at the beginning of 2009. According to the chart published by hardspell, the red team is expected to release the 40nm RV870 (HD5800) GPU in Q1 2009. The chip will feature 205mm2, 1.5Teraflops of power, and 512Bit interface, while supporting DX11 and OpenGL3.

The first NVIDIA 40nm GPU, GT212, is expected in the first quarter of 2009, but that is not a certainty. In Q2, the green company will launch 40nm GT216, with GDDR5 and dual core. The third and fourth quarters of the next year will bring the dual core RV780 from ATI, as well as the 40nm GT300 from NVIDIA, which will feature DX11D support.

While ATI is doing well and is carefully working on its future plans, NVIDIA must haste things up a little. The green graphics cards are reported to face little demand, and the company had to drop the prices for its GeForce GTX 280 and 260 solutions. Moreover, GeForce 9800 GTX+ and 9800 GT seem to be outpaced by ATI's Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 cards.