14 DAY TRIAL // There has been quite a bit of discussion around the web concerning the upcoming Fermi-based NVIDIA graphics cards, but what has generally characterized the company's next-generation products is the overall lack of official benchmarks and actual information on the product specifications. This fact has yet to change, even with the recent rumors that mass availability of GF100-powered products would only come sometime during the second quarter. More recently, however, TechConnect Magazine has reported that the GPU maker may finally go into more details.
Of course, there is no hard evidence that Monday's announcement will even be about Fermi, as NVIDIA's Twitter post only said that the company would be making a major announcement on Monday at 9:00 AM PST, or 17:00 PM GMT/UTC. If the GPU maker will talk about Fermi, consumers worldwide might finally get to see actual benchmarks and some official performance numbers of the upcoming GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 graphics adapters.
Granted, there have been practically no pictures or benchmark leaks, so it is unlikely that the products would actually launch. Still, this would be the first major move of NVIDIA on the field of DirectX 11 graphics.
Not so long ago, AMD was revealed to be planning on releasing its first DirectX 11 card with the Eyefinity 6 technology around the same time NVIDIA was slated to release its next-generation graphics cards. If NVIDIA shows some promising benchmarks on Monday, consumer expectations will rise and the graphics-card maker will have secured a larger part of the end-user attention for when its products finally become available.
NVIDIA might also be optimistic about its future thanks to the revenue and profit growth it achieved during the fourth quarter of its Fiscal Year 2009. Monday will reveal whether NVIDIA genuinely plans on detailing its GF100-powered cards or if the company has some secret product in store.