Following the launch of their next generation of boards, ATI and nVidia are gearing-up for the introduction of their PCI-Express range at this year's Computex in Taiwan.
It is reported that nVidia has already sent its NV45, the NV40 with PCI-X support, to some partners. The NV45 will ship ready with nVidia's HSI bridge chip but it is not certain if the chip is native PCI-Express. It is expected that nVidia will attempt to clock the NV45 higher than the 6800 Ultra, with the 256MB of DDR3 256 bit memory expected to reach 1100 MhZ, in order to make it the ultimate performer for the company and to justify its USD 499 price range.
While nVidia's presence at Computex is not yet confirmed, it is expected that ATI will have a few PCI-X options available for the show. ATI is determined to bring PCI-X to everyone and the cards introduced will belong to the company's economy range.
Clock speeds for the PCX boards have not yet been confirmed but the RV380 and RV370 will be available for the show.
RV380 will be a 0.13 board, the fastest of the two, will carry the X600 brand and is expected to peak at just under USD 200. RV370, the first 0.11 offering from ATI, will be called the X300 and should be the cheapest PCI-X card although pricing is not yet clear for that one.
Don't expect to see or hear much about the Canadian flagship, R423 or X880 XT, during Computex though, as ATI plans to stretch the introduction of its full range over the whole summer period.
It has taken a while but PCI-Express is about to be unleashed on the graphics world.
