NVIDIA Supposedly Planning to Delay Fermi Once More

Just a short while ago, NVIDIA revealed that, according to internal testing procedures, Fermi-based cards would dominate all the graphics market segments. Needless to say, this propelled the Fermi hype even higher than it already was, but it seems that anticipations may turn into disappointment if the rumors published by Digitimes turn out to be true. According to the website’s sources, NVIDIA seems to have pushed the launch date from CES to March 2010.

“Nvidia originally scheduled to launch Fermi in November 2009, but was delayed until CES in January 2010 due to defects, according to market rumors. However, the company recently notified graphics card makers that the official launch will now be in March 2010,” said the Digitimes article.

On the other side of the fence is AMD, which is reported to have plans for the release of two new adapters set for the end of January or the beginning of February. NVIDIA did not speak on the report, stating that it does not comment on unreleased products, but, if it turns out to be genuine, the company's existing GPUs will have to hold their own in front of not just the existing ATI cards, but also the upcoming 40nm Radeon HD 5670/5570 (Redwood) and HD 5450 (Cedar) GPUs. Currently, the GeForce GTS250, GT240/220 and 9800GT/9500GT are matched against AMD's Radeon HD 5770/5750, 4870/4850 and 4670/4650.

So far, the only card NVIDIA is suggested to have planned for release in March is the GF100, with the GF104 set for the second quarter. Until then, ATI's existing DirectX 11 cards, as well as the aforementioned Redwood and Cedar-based GPUs, will have free reign.

NVIDIA recently stated that a Fermi-based card had already performed well in internal tests and that it only had to finish up the driver for the device. This delay either means that the development is not exactly as far along as suggested or that the company intends to launch the product at a time when initial availability will not be threatened by low 40nm yields. Currently, TSMC is still unable to supply both ATI and NVIDIA, even though its 40nm yields have started to improve.