14 DAY TRIAL // While NVIDIA has been letting end-users wait for months without offering any DirectX 11-capable graphics card, there is no disputing the fact that the GF100-powered products have generated a lot of anticipation. Currently, the GPU maker is slated to launch its GTX 470 and GTX 480 at PAX 2010. Unfortunately, what still hasn't made its way to the public is an actual pre-release photo of either product. More recently, however, the folks over at TechConnect magazine claim to have found a pair of such pictures.
The photos don't reveal much and there is no confirmation that they really are, as they claim, of the fabled GTX 470. In fact, considering that the Fermi chip used in the creation of the GTX 470 and GTX 480 is, by itself, supposedly quite large, the card itself seems rather short compared with what one would expect a top-tier adapter to look like.
Other details that can be made out are two 6-pin PCI Express power connectors, tri-SLI compatibility and DVI and HDMI outputs. In addition, the device comes with a dual-slot cooling mechanism and ten memory chips on the front, which seem to confirm the alleged 320-bit-wide memory interface.
Among the graphics capabilities that this adapter is expected to feature are the obvious and long-awaited DirectX 11 support, along with CUDA, 3D Vision Surround and PhysX. In addition, the card also supposedly comes with no less than 448 CUDA cores, although this has yet to be confirmed in any way.
Of course, NVIDIA is not offering, and most likely will not offer any comments on the report, having resolved to making the official announcement on March 26. What remains now is for consumers to keep looking forward to the launch and eventually see whether the GTX series graphics cards live up to the hype they have generated.
