14 DAY TRIAL // There has been much anticipation surrounding the upcoming DirectX 11-capable cards from NVIDIA, but the products were delayed so many times that some end-users might actually no longer be surprised at hearing that the cards were delayed yet again. In a more surprising turn of events, however, one of these upcoming graphics adapters, namely the GeForce GTX 480, is now being listed on SabrePC, showing that, this once, NVIDIA might actually deliver the new cards on time.
Seeing how NVIDIA made end-users wait for its products for such a long time, the general expectation is that, for NVIDIA to score massively and regain the ground it lost while AMD exclusively sold DirectX 11 cards, the Fermi-enabled devices would have to be superior in all ways to existing products.
Unfortunately, the listing does not exactly provide sufficient information on the product specifications in order to establish whether or not the card does meet these standards. The specs that are revealed, however, show 512 CUDA cores (shader units), no less than 2GB of GDDR5 memory with an interface of 384 bits and a number of tessellation units.
NVIDIA's own GTX 480 is expected to be launched along with a lower cost version during the last part of this quarter. The insufficiently detailed XFX card is, currently, bearing a price tag of $699 before a 20$ rebate. Unfortunately, the site does not mention any ETA, although the simple fact that the card is listed seems to imply that, this time around at least, NVIDIA will get the card out on the intended date.
The latest rumors concerning Fermi availability imply that, while NVIDIA might officially introduce its cards during the first quarter of its Fiscal Year 2011, actual mass availability won't come before Q2. What is left is to wait for the devices to actually launch and see just how well they fare in benchmark tests against AMD's own products.