New information about nVidia's upcoming GeForce FX chip, was released during its European presentation. During the presentation nVidia confirmed some of the already known features of the card, such as DDR Memory at 1GHz and the amazing 500 MHz of the GPU. What perplexes experts is nVidia's insistance on hinting that the internal bandwidth will be 64 GB/s. The math on that does not quite work ou, but the company insist that they will soon announce how they plan to achieve that.
The new information about the new chip came from the fact that the few lucky journalists that attended the European presentation got to actually see the card, physically and in action.
GeForce FX will be the heaaviest GF yet, courtesy of the copper heatsink it will carry on its rear. It will occupy 2 slots on the motherboard and case and will have two air tunnels.
As far as speculation about the name is concerned, nVidia chose the FX as a tribute to 3DFX, whose former engineers played a large part in the production of the new card but they will include a 5 in the model number. The 5 will indicate that the card is the fifth in the GF range. The first card to be released, although not officially announced, will be called the GeForce FX 5800 and will cost a mere USD 399, same as the GF 4 TI4600 did upon release. If you think that's high-end then consider the reved-up up version, the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, which will set, its lucky owner, back USD 499.
GeForce FX is expected to fulfill its promise of being the fastest chip on the market but it is not expected to hit store shelves until early February, since it will be available to nVidia partners by late December.