14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA finally launched its GeForce GTX 400 Series of graphics adapters and, in the short while between then and now, most of its manufacturing partners have come out with their respective models as well. However, what end-users may have noticed is the absence of a product launch from one of NVIDIA's most successful partners, namely XFX. Wondering why this graphics card maker had not launched any Fermi products, Fudzilla did some digging and apparently discovered that the brand won’t have any GF100 at launch.
Back in the first half of January, some rumors started to circulate, indicating that NVIDIA might be planning on terminating its partnership with XFX. A subsequent report supposedly denied this, but it seems that NVIDIA is cutting its veteran partner off from the GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480. Naturally, the sources of the report see this as NVIDIA’s so-called punishment for XFX's decision, last year, to also start selling graphics adapters based on technology from Advanced Micro Devices.
According to the report, NVIDIA could see a stronger response, on the part of consumers, than it might think. XFX is a well established name on the graphics solution market and has a very loyal fan base unlikely to take this news standing down. In fact, depending on the level of discontent that NVIDIA's decision will instill, consumers might decide against buying Fermi cards from other manufacturers or even go for XFX ATI cards instead.
In the meantime, XFX will do only what it can, namely make do without DirectX 11 cards from the Santa Clara-based GPU maker. In fact, a recent leak has already done its part and revealed the existence of the superpowered HD 5970 4GB Eyefinity 6 Black Edition, which has no less than 4GB memory and will ship inside a box shaped like a sub-machine gun. The device will be a limited edition item and sell at a premium price of $1,000.