ATI, Nvidia beat PCI Express drum. Loudly

AS WE MENTIONEDbefore, both ATI and Nvidia were beating the PCI-Express drum at IDF. We were not able to bring you pictures earlier, but here are a few. First up is the Nvidia 5300 PCI-Express card. Not the most stunning thing, but in a stick-it-to-the-man moment, it is on an ATI T-Shirt.

Moving along to the ATI booth, there were a few more interesting things. First is a PCI-E card in a Grantsdale system.

We are not supposed to tell you at the private suite, under NDAs we are never going to sign, they were showing a whole slew of HD parts. Expect just about everything from ATI to be HD soon. One thing that we managed to grab a picture of when no one was minding us was the new, non-PCI-E, non-HD ATI mint, this one was a v3.0 prototype. For the sake of screwing both sides equally, it is on an Nvidia T-Shirt. Take that!

Lastly there is word on the NV40 R420 front. Neither card was shown, but several people who would be familiar with both have said Nvidia is going to come back very strong soon. The word 'own' was bandied about, as in Nvidia will own ATI. Not sure what it means, but CeBit should be a very interesting show. µ