Nvidia's NV44 is 110 nanometres as well

Sheesh. No surprise there and we wrote about ATI's commitment to go even to 90 nanometres before. You first have to go lower, and then lower again, as we wrote here.

We didn't know about the R430 chip but then again it's just the R420 built at a 110 nanometres. It's entirely natural that ATI would switch to a smaller process and save some space on its wafers as an ultimate goal and to have as many dies as possible out of a silicon sliver. It's not safe, though, saying that 110 nanometres means cooler chips and we learned this lesson from Mr Prescott.

One thing puzzles us about ze R430 is that that chip is supposed to be AGP but it could be PCI Express too.

The only chip that Digitimes didn't mention was NV44 - the Nvidia low end chip that will also be 110 nanometre based and arrive together with NV43 later this year.

The szechuan looks good for Nvidia since it can make AGP parts in a "jiffy" from its NV44 and NV43 as its BR2, HSI chip is working both ways - it's bi-directional, if you'll forgive the language. ATI may have to get the foundries to make two chips to achieve this bi-directional feat if it doesn't decice to bridge soon. µ