NVIDIA G80 will be the first high-end card on the market to sport DirectX 10 and earlier rumors have stated that NVIDIA will equip its new flagship with 32 pipelines and 16 vertex/geometry shader units. Now new information says that G80 will be made with NVIDIA’s current 90nm manufacturing process, which would mean that G80 could be one mighty big graphics circuit. But considering the indications we’ve received from PSU manufacturers this is hardly a surprise. The reason for NVIDIA to stick to its 90nm process is simply because it wants to avoid any possible problems that could occur using a smaller manufacturing process. We all remember ATI’s numerous delays with R520.
ATI made the same choice with its coming flagship and when Radeon X1950 XTX arrives it will be with 90nm technology, while it is “testing” its 80nm process with X1950 Pro (RV570), which will be launched at the same time. If the 90nm technology will be a hinder for NVIDIA remains to be seen, but it will at least have a few months advantage on ATI’s DX10 graphics circuit, R600.
