NVIDIA is set to launch its next generation (codenamed Fermi) GeForce GTX 480 and 470 on March 26, but while this is supposed to be a “hard launch” (product is available on the same day for purchase), industry watchers are wondering if quantities will be (very) limited. Digitimes claims that second-tier partners (those who build AMD and NVIDIA cards, versus NVIDIA-only) have not received any reference design boards yet. May be so, but it looks to me like NVIDIA wants to rewards its first-tier partners for their loyalty, so the quantity issue might be a little overblown. The $679.99 price of the GTX 480 would indicate that NVIDIA will claim the speed crown (by how much?) when it launches, and at that price, I don’t think that volume is going to be a problem anyway…
Now, there could still be an availability issue if the yields are bad because NVIDIA wants to push the frequency of the chip too high to reach its performance goals (bad yields = lot of defective chips). But the word on the street is that NVIDIA has *lowered* the speed, probably to improve the yields and other things like thermal requirements. Interestingly, most of the volume will be done with mid-range GPUs that should come out fairly quickly afterwards because their development must have continued despite technical difficulties to push the GTX 480 / 470 to the market. It might be worth holding your breath just a little.
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