What the hell is.... Nvidia's NV 38

ATI IS NOT THE ONLY graphics company to introduce a re-spin of existing marchitecture. Its friends over at Nvidia also have well-felt intentions to keep the performance crown if possible in the bid to be the fastest.

We've already covered ATI's R360 and RV360 in some details - these are simply speed and production re-spins of the R350 and RV350 cores now known as Radeon 9800 and 9600 PRO and non PRO.

It was irrational to expect that Nvidia would give ATI the performance crown without a fight, but this move will mean that Nvidia will announce a new chip just one quarter or so after NV35.

NV38 is a speed increase of NV35 with obviously higher clocks for both memory and GPU but at this time we don't have any firm idea about them, although Anna's Xbit Labs has reported some frequency numbers.

We are almost certain that R360 will beat NV35 in most cases but NV38 could add some extra oil to the already blazing fire.

Our friends told us that NV38 and NV36 could be introduced at the upcoming ECTS London event that will take place at the end of August but Nvidia does not have any chance to ship cards then, and even if it did, it would hurt its sales of the existing products that have just shipped.

We reckon that NV38 could be in the shops only weeks or possibly months after it's announced since that was exactly the case with FX 5900 aka NV35. Even if it can ship it on time, it would drastically hurt the sales of NV35 and its partners would be in trouble since as soon as the NV38 appears, the NV35 price will drop significantly.

Performance wise it will be 10% to a maximum of 15% faster than FX5900 Ultra, NV35 since there is simply not too much space for performance increase in this core.

As for the names NV36 is likely Geforce FX 5700 while we don't know any name for NV38 - maybe the FX6800, original name of NV35? Who knows but the marketeers sitting in their marchitecture towers.

One thing is sure. Whatever ATI does these days, Nvidia follows and vice versa, and both firms' plans change all the time just to keep up in the game. You are witnessing one of the stiffest competitions of all time in the chip industry. µ