NVIDIA Introduces GeForce FX (NV30)

Performance

Interestingly enough, NVIDIA did not make many performance numbers available to us prior to the GeForce FX announcement. In fact, the majority of the performance numbers won't be revealed until after this article is published. Right now NVIDIA is claiming a 30 - 50% performance advantage over the Radeon 9700 Pro across the board. We will be able to put those claims to the test as soon as we have a card in hand.

NVIDIA provided us with Doom3 scores that indicated a 40% advantage over the Radeon 9700 Pro.

When?

As we've mentioned before, the kicker is that the GeForce FX won't be available until February of next year. The chip itself is done and production is ramping up at TSMC; one of the causes for the delay is that producing the 0.13-micron wafers apparently takes several more weeks at TSMC than the older 0.15-micron process.

With availability in February, we're hoping to have review samples before the end of this year. As far as pricing goes, you can expect the fastest GeForce FX to be more expensive than the Radeon 9700 Pro. The real question is how much the "single slot" version will go for and how it will stack up to the Radeon.