Nvidia Speeds Things Up

As reported during the release of the new G80 series, Ati was on its way to release 380nm products, in order to at least challenge Nvidia in the 80nm field. That means less power drained for roughly the same gaming capabilities. And don't think that's of no importance since an actual 90nm product (7900gt) consumes 65W in full load, same as an older 6600GT built on 110nm process.

Take that into account and you'll realize the benefit of having more products using 80nm technology on the market. Ati already announced its new 80nm based line, starting with the newcomers RV560/570 being incorporated in new mid-range products and continuing with low-range products based on the new RV516/505, all being manufactured by TSMC, excepting maybe RV505 which could also be produced by UMC.

In order to counter the effect, besides the launch of the new beast based on the G80 series, Nvidia revised their older GPUs (G73 & G72) and will mass produce 80nm versions of them. G73 will be the first to suffer a facelift and then be released as G73-B1. A revised version of G72 will follow shortly after that.