Hardware Accelerated has posted a Q&A with NVidia Chief Scientist David Kirk. Kirk is asked about the CG language, the competition, the nForce 2, AGP8x, and a few other hardware topics.

So a little while ago we had a story about how the next-gen NVidia cards (The NV30) will probably hit the holiday season, but not really be out in full force until Q1 of next year. Well this website (Thanks aggressor) has a few pictures of a recent "NVidia Mania Day" held by NVidia folks for the press to talk about their upcoming part. Perhaps a few of you speak Korean, but for the rest of us we're stuck checking out the pictures. Here are a few things that stand out from NVidia's presentation:

- More than 2X performance of GeForce4
- Better anti-aliasing
- Full floating point throughout pipeline (51,000,000,000 operations)
- 3X the size of a P4 processor

I dont really think I plan on doing my next videocard purchase until DOOM3 / Half-Life2 / Duke4 / etc. show up. Yeah, I dunno why I listed Duke4 either... :). update: Speaking of this stuff, Anandtech has some interesting stuff on NVidia's 8X AGP card. Thanks -Panther-.

It looks like the folks at ATI are going to be sitting pretty for the holiday season. We've been hearing rumblings about NVidia having troubles getting their NV30 / GeForce5 card out to market and that seems to be becoming more of a reality. Here's the latest from CNET:

"Basically, they missed the cycle," Hans Mosesmann, a Prudential Securities analyst, said of Nvidia. "Really (the NV30) is a fall product that's now been pushed out for all intents and purposes to the spring." Once NV30 products do appear, they’re likely to be 25 percent to 50 percent faster than the Radeon 9700

Of course by next year there's no telling what ATI might be close to having ready.

Are You Ready? That's what NVidia wants to know. I am guessing they are introducing a pair of magic sneakers. Thanks drago_core.

If you want to know what the performance difference between all the different Nvidia Detonator releases is, Guru of 3D has a comparison article. Twenty four different versions of the drivers were tested.

NVIDIA nForce2 Engineered to Deliver Outstanding Performance for New AMD Athlon CPUs is one of several press releases out this morning, as AMD announces their XP2800 and XP2700 CPUs (with 333mhz FSB) at the same time as NVidia announces the nForce2 motherboard. Reviews of new XP running on the nForce2 are up at HardOCP, AMD Zone, Tech Report, Aces Hardware. Various other sites have also taken a look at the new AMD CPUs though not always in combination with the nForce2: Deviant PC, HardcoreWare, Bjorn3D, The Tech Zone, AnandTech (and his nForce2 performance article).

According to The Inquirer, NVidia will announce their newest graphics chipset NV30 at Comdex. This event is held November 18 - 22. Cards might be released in December if that's the case, but it might just as well be early 2003.

NVIDIA Offers Industry's First and Only Full Family of AGP 8X GPU and Core Logic Solutions is the lengthy title of a new NVidia press release, announcing that all their GeForce 4 cards will now ship with support for AGP 8X. Of course the nForce 2 motherboard chipset will support AGP 8X as well.

AnandTech has a pretty interesting article online, taking a tour of the ATI and NVidia plants. If you wanted to know how all these super fast GPUs get designed and tested, here's your chance.

UKGamer has published the first part of their NVidia interview conducted at ECTS. Topics include questions about competition, and knitting sweaters and which weaves are best for the cold winters.

There is a Q&A with NVidia's Tony Tamasi on HomeLAN Fed, Tony being the general manager of desktop graphics over there. He's asked about the success of the company, the delay between new graphic features and games that actually use them, if the GeForce4MX is not just a horrible product, response to the nForce 2 and more.

NVidia has released new Detonator drivers for videocards based on their chipsets, making a version jump from 3x to 40.41. Up to 25% increase in performance is promised. Windows 2000/XP only at the moment. Thanks Erik.

According to a CNET story, videocard maker VisionTek hasn't gone out of business quite yet (story). Creditors have appointed a trustee, but the company will remain in business for the time being while the trustee tries to determine if the company can be sold. Tech support should continue as well, however CNET mentions that "Telephone calls made Monday and Tuesday to VisionTek's main number and tech-support line went unanswered".

According to this story on HardOCP, videocard maker VisionTek is gone. They were the number one retailer of NVidia videocards in North America, but apparently that wasn't enough to keep them going.

AnandTech and Voodoo Extreme both have articles on Nvidia's upcoming chipset, NV30 and its CineFX architecture. AnandTech managed to find out that the part finally taped out last week and Nvidia's current schedule calls for a November shipping date.

Voodoo Extreme has posted a Q&A with David Kirk, who is the Chief Scientist of NVidia. David is asked about API evolvement, the control developers get when they use the new Cg language for shader effects and other Cg related questions, if developers will ever "talk" directly to the GPU, pixel and vertex shader programming, and various other questions where you have to know your buzzwords.

In a new CineFX architecture whitepaper (PDF) on the NVidia Developer site, some specs of the upcoming NV3X architecture are mentioned. Looks like NVidia will follow ATI with 128-bit internal color precision, and the amount of vertex and pixel shader instructions has been significantly upgraded. There's more in there but you need to know your buzzwords. Thanks zeroprey.

More nForce 2 previews today, all of them giving us an overview of all the improvements in NVidia's newest AMD motherboard chipset. Again no benchmarks, just based on what NVidia has told these sites. Take a look at articles on HardOCP, AnandTech, VIA Hardware, Hardware Accelerated, Deviant PC, Tech Report and GamePC. NVidia has also issued an official press release on the new chips. DDR400, USB 2.0, FireWire, dual networking, its all there.

A preview of the Nvidia nForce 2 is up at Bjorn3D, mostly based on Nvidia information. Nvidia should be announcing their revised motherboard chipset today.

Tweakers Asylum and Guru of 3D are both offering Detonator drivers for NVidia cards, with version number 30.30. There's a Win98/ME version as well as a Windows 2000/XP version.