So things havent been looking so great for NVidia recently, after sitting at the top for quite a while with the GeForce line, they were passed up last year by the folks at ATI with their Radeon 9700 cards. NVidia didnt seem too worried with their NV30 card on the way but then they started running into problem after problem and the date kept slipping further and further back. They ended up doing a 'paper launch' last year in mid-November for the card in hopes of taking a bit of the attention away from ATI. Then, a bit over 2 months later they handed out review cards to the hardware sites where the card got panned for the most part. Now here we are closing in on mid-February without any GeForceFX cards on shelves still, and then this hits, the GeForceFX Ultra retail release has been canned. Doh!
the GeForceFX 5800 Ultra will never make it to retail. Those of you that PreBuy the cards will still get an Ultra model with the FX Flow cooling unit. Those who don't will have the opportunity to get the non-Ultra version (400/800) off the retail shelves for a price of US$300.00.
To compound things a bit more, word from the ATI camp is that their next cards based on the R350 chips are already on the production line in significant numbers. What's this mean? It means yay for market competition! I cant wait to see what NVidia does next later this year.
Steve Gibson is the cofounder of Shacknews.com. Originally known as sCary's Quakeholio back in 1996, Steve is now President of Gearbox Publishing after selling Shacknews to GameFly in 2009.
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