Nvidia NV41 coming in November

NVIDIA HAS A NEW secret steed for the graphics race and this time it clippity-clops about under the NV41 codename. I have to admit that people haven't talked much about this chip, even though we pre-announced it for Nvidia quite some time ago.

This chip is nothing more than a lower cost version of the NV40 core that will be adjusted for the performance mainstream market. This is the market where cards cost from $200 to $300.

NV41 may well be called Geforce 6700. It will be clocked to 400MHz core and 1000MHz memory. Cards will, rather surprisingly, use a 256 bit memory interface and will come in two variants, 128MB and 256MB.

We are unsure about number of pipelines but we strongly suggest it will have twelve of them otherwise it could jeopardise Geforce 6800GT cards. 6800GT is clocked to 350MHz core and 1000MHz memory.

This card should replace the 6800 standard card that is quite expensive for Nvidia to produce and it could mean the end of the 6800 standard.

Nvidia will manufacture NV41 chips at IBM's Fishkill factory, using its proven 130 nanometre process and will ship them in Q4 this year.

Its direct competitor will be ATI R430 chip. We mentioned that here. We also mentioned the NV41 chip earlier and you can check that here, here and here. Yes, indeed. µ