NVidia claims about its, upcoming, NV40 chip are beginning to raise hopes that the graphics war may truly be back on. Even though the claims about the new chip may seem extravagant, they do seem to suggest that the new boards will correct quite a few of the misgivings of the current core which has kept NVidia playing second fiddle to Canadian rival ATI.
According to the inquirer.net, the new core will enable cards to run four times faster in Doom 3 and seven times faster in Half Life 2 then its current fastest product. In order to back-up such extravagant claims the company indicates that the NV40 will support the shader models 3.0 that it claims are in DirectX 9.0c and that the new chip will have three times the performance and eight times faster shaders than the NV35. If any of this is even remotely close to the cards actual performance then the graphics speed crown will really be up for grabs this time round.
The NV40 is expected to run at between 450 and 550 MHz with the faster versions gaining the coveted U or Ultra marking while the memory will be GDDR 2 or 3. NVidia has also been working on keeping the noise levels down on the new boards, so expect an improvement there too.
Although sample boards should be out this month, cards are expected to become available in April while the official announcement is expected during this year's CeBit exhibition i.e. Thursday 18th of March.
