The recent financial analyst meeting called by Nvidia last week unveiled more juicy details about the company's roadmap and even managed to pull some new pieces of information regarding the upcoming GT-200

graphics processor.

The company kept a deep, dark secret on its top-notch GeForce 9900 design, mostly because Nvidia did not want to endanger its professional line-up of Quadro graphics cards launched a few days ago. The GeForce 9900 graphics core is more than a refurbished and an enhanced version of the G92 architecture, but rather a totally new breed of GPUs with additional features and incredible graphics power.

Moreover, Nvidia recently released its high-end GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce GX2, and rumors about another card to be immediately released would put sales on hold. The GT-200 graphics processor is slated for release sometime in late-third quarter or even early-Q4.

However, the internal documentation released by Nvidia to its partners claim that the GT-200 die is extremely stable and can be used for outlining the reference designs already. In fact, rumor has it that the GT-200 has been sampling for quite a few weeks now.

Nvidia is racing against time, and it has enough reasons to rush the introduction of its flagship models, given the fact that AMD will launch a powerful successor of its highly-appreciated RV670 GPU, that powers the Radeon 3850 and 3870 models, including the dual-GPU models. This rush could be mostly due to the anticipated competition on the market.

According to the rumors emerging from AMD's manufacturing partners, the Radeon RV770 graphics cards will hit the market this summer at an estimative price tag of below $300. In contrast, Nvidia's upcoming GeForce 9900 will be priced much higher than its most expensive offerings, that sell for more than $500.

Retailers are already preparing to clear out the stock of "old" series of GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce GX2, in order to make room for the GT-200 units.