50w Fermi ?

You can never overestimate how much people want to know about nVidia and its products. Yesterday, we discussed nVidia's high-end products, the GTX 465 and GTX470.  We have been inundated with requests about ‘Fermi for the masses’. We’re not going to share all of our intel, but here’s one  snippet that you might find interesting.

Everyone is looking for the latest and greatest. With graphics, that normally happens when Microsoft issues a new version of Windows and updates the DirectX model at the same time.

Each generation of DirectX is ‘richer’ than the last and that means ever more sophisticated hardware is needed to run it. Ever wondered why the graphics giants tend to launch their high-end parts first? Simple, there is more space to work with. Remember, each new GPU is amazingly complex and represents a huge step forward over the previous generation. That means that the final cards have never been seen before. No one really knows what the ‘complete package’ characteristics will be until a card comes of an assembly line and is inserted into a real PC.

Over time, the experts understand more and more about the chip and are able to make it simpler and smaller. Right now, that is happening with the GTX465, ready to show at Computex.

Projecting that timeline forward, KitGuru predicts that nVidia will have a GT420 part ready to go late in Q3. While it might only have DDR3 memory and a smaller (128 bit?) bus, it will do something that many thought was impossible. Deliver Fermi to the masses using just 50 watts.

As always with these forward looking statements, we stand to be corrected, but this seems entirely plausible.

The only thing we're not sure about is will the 50w Fermi be more interesting to Jonah Alben or Philip Carmack?

(KitGuru must be getting old, these senior VPs look younger and younger!)

Will this launch be completely overshadowed by Northern Islands?  Who knows. The proof will be in the benchmarking.

KitGuru says: Roll on 50w Fermi, let’s make DX11 available to the widest audience possible.

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