14 DAY TRIAL // Nowadays, it seems as though all the hopes of consumers and PC makers alike are concentrated on the GF104, the graphics processing unit that NVIDIA is working on and that promises to bring all the benefits of the Fermi architecture without any of the drawbacks. Already, rumors are swarming about the likelihood of all future cards, even mainstream ones, being enabled by the new chip. Of course, should all expectations be fulfilled, NVIDIA may, in fact, win back all the ground it has lost.
There is no way of knowing for sure just what the GF104 can or cannot do, but Fudzilla has been making a point of keeping the inflow of reports and leaks about the product strong. One of the more recent ones implies that the Santa Clara, California-based company has made some serious modifications to its roadmap, to the point where the certain implementation of the GF100 was canceled in favor of the GF104.
Fudzilla suggests that NVIDIA aims to eventually bring forth a GF104 with 512 shaders. Some consumers may recall that this is the number of shaders that the GF100 was supposed to have at launch. Unfortunately, this high-end part has not exactly become as popular as it could because, despite powering the fastest single-GPU card on the market, it consumes a lot of power and produces just as much heat. Since the GF104 promises not to have these issues, using its architecture for a 512-shader GPU appears to make sense.
Fudzilla states that the reason why NVIDIA isn't in any hurry to unleash such a beast is that it already owns the performance crown. Most likely, the new part will debut when ATI takes an ace out of its own sleeve. This may occur sometime during the third quarter of the ongoing year, though nothing is certain.