While some details of ATI's R360 and RV360, the speed bumped versions of the R350 and RV350, have surfaced there was no information on NVidia having any similar plans. That is, until the mysterious NV38 appeared. It suddenly makes sense that the company couldn't sit idly by while ATI reclaim their speed crown with nothing other than revised versions of the Radeon 9800 and 9600. So NVidia moved fast and plans to launch the NV38, a revised NV35, in September with boards using the core expected in stores by October 2003. It may be slightly embarassing to release a revised version of the NV35 just a quarter after its release but the graphics war is heating up again.
The fact that NVidia will be releasing a new chip does indicate, strongly, that they do believe that ATI's R360 will be faster than the NV35. In order to face that threat NVidia will release the NV38 in a simple and Ultra version and plan to tweak the NV35 in order to obtain higher core and memory frequencies. Some suggestions claim that the memory-clock may be as high as 1GHz for 256-bit memory bus, whereas the core-clock may reach 500 to 550MHz.
Considering the short time slot available to NVidia before they announce the NV40, expected in November 2003, it is very likely that the NV36 and NV38 will be announced sooner rather than later and will become available very quickly.
It is safer to view these tweaked versions of cards as something to keep us busy until the next big thing comes along and it is apt that details of such a product emerged today, international foreplay day.
