High Hopes for NVIDIA's 9800GTX+ Cards

As we reported in a previous article, NVIDIA's GeForce 9800GTX+ edition has become available at a number of its board partners. However, even if details such as the specs, pricing and photos of the new graphics card have already been revealed, the green company is yet to officially launch it. Not that this in itself would stop the giant from setting its hopes very high where the G92b card is concerned, as recent reports claim it has.

It is already common knowledge that the GeForce 9800GTX+ is NVIDIA's first attempt at the 55nm fabrication process. Even more, it has been unleashed to compete with the latest HD4000-series of cards that AMD has recently unveiled, in the mainstream arena. The card has been built on the G92 graphics processor, and is meant to improve the performance levels achieved by the GeForce 9800 GTX.

Apparently, as the Fudzilla website reports, the Santa Clara-based graphics manufacturer intends to ship at least 130,000 GeForce 9800 GTX+ products at launch. Unfortunately, at this time, no details are available concerning the official release date of the much anticipated card. Even so, NVIDIA's partners should have enough stock to last them until the end of this month.

According to the above-mentioned site, the performance levels achieved by the new card fall short of expectations. This ultimately represents yet another piece of bad news for NVIDIA, since it puts it in a not-too-favorable light. On the other hand, this could also mean that we’re about to see a series of price cuts for the company's G92-based lineup sometime soon.

For now, the 55nm-enabled GeForce card is listed for approximately €150, depending on retailer. The price is roughly similar to that of the 65nm-based GeForce 9800 GTX, but it is expected to drop in the near future, probably when NVIDIA goes official with the 55nm-based card.