14 DAY TRIAL // By now, almost every computer enthusiast out there must know that AMD has finally succeeded in claiming the number one spot in the high-performance graphics market, making the guys at NVIDIA scratch their heads to come up with a new card that would be capable of competing with the powerful Radeon HD 4870 X2. This is also the source of a rumor currently making the rounds, and which has it that the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker is working on an even more powerful version of its current GT200 GPU, one that is expected to launch even before the year's end.
The latest round of rumors stems from the Australian site Austin, which has already listed NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280+, a graphics card that is based on a G200b, a 55nm upgrade to the company's current GT200 flagship graphics processor. In addition, the abovementioned website has also listed the rumored GTX 350, a GeForce card, based on the GT300 GPU and that was initially believed to become available sometime next year. However, the listing on Austin indicates that this card should become available sooner than expected, with users in Australia being able to acquire it sometime in Q4 2008.
Only a few of details are available at the moment but, according to the abovementioned listing, the green company is done with its 65nm process technology and the new cards will benefit from the 55nm manufacturing process, which has been adopted by AMD for its Radeon cards for some time now. One of the most interesting facts about the upcoming GT200b-enabled GeForce GTX280+ graphics card is that it will come with a PCI-E 2.0 interface, 1GB of GDDR3 memory on 512-bit memory interface.
As far as the new and improved GT300 GPU and the GTX 350 graphics card are concerned, it looks like NVIDIA is set to equip the upcoming flagship model with an impressive 2GB of GDDR5 memory, working at 512-bit interface. Unfortunately, there are no details regarding the cards' stock frequency levels, but given the provided details, NVIDIA could soon reclaim the number one spot for the best high-end graphics card manufacturer on the market. Users can only hope that these cards will become available at a much more reasonable price.