Ever since NVIDIA lost the number one spot in the high-end graphics card market segment, everyone has been waiting for the the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker to finally unveil its first 55nm-based product. Just recently, several rumors have been circulating on the Internet, some of which claim that the company has already transitioned its GTX260 card, which is expected to debut on the market this month.

 

However, recent details have it that the GTX260 graphics cards, which will be powered by a 55nm graphics processor, should debut sometime in January next year. Moreover, the fellows over at Expreview claim to have the world's first image of a 55nm GT200 exposed.

 

It appears that the chip maker has been preparing its first 55nm-based graphics processor for some time now, as recent info indicates that the production cycle for the 55nm GT200 graphics cards has started earlier this year, in the 33rd week of 2008 (between August 11th and 17th). This basically means that the green company transitioned its GT200-based graphics cards to the 55nm process technology about 5 weeks after it launched its 65nm-based cards.

 

A picture on Expreview showcasing an NVIDIA GPU, which is marked as the G200-103-B2, is said to be the first photo of the company's 55nm GT200 GPU. Apparently, the B in the GPU's name stands for the 55nm process technology, as the 65nm-based cards are featured with the G200-103-A2 dubbing. Also, the current G200-103-A2 GPUs are different from the initial GTX260 graphics cards that were powered by a G200-1-A2 GPU, which boasted 192 Stream Processors and was built on a 65nm process technology.

 

The G200B graphics processors are expected to power more high-end products, due to be released by the Santa Clara, California-based company sometime in early 2009. Such products include the GTX280 (on 55nm) and the dual-core 260GX2, a card that could potentially give ATI's Radeon HD 4870 X2 a run for its money.