NVIDIA is working hard at the moment to get their NV40 ready for an announcement at the upcoming CeBit exhibition. It is still a little bit too early to know the exact clock rate at which their new core will run, but according to sources it is going to be at 450MHz to 550MHz, possibly even 600MHz.
The first card that it showed to many loyal people was based on A0 silicon and it was only running at 300MHz, but you could not expect more from such an early bird.
The second revision is expected by the end of this month - if not earlier - and should rock much higher, at 450 to 550MHz we were told. But we understand Nvidia dreams of reaching 600MHz with it. A slightly over-hopeful hope, in our humble view. With semiconductors you simply never know, but Nvidia will sure clock it as high as they possibly can.
We also heard that they might do the same tactic as with NV25 and have three differently clocked versions of the chip and make three cards with different price margins. Does TI4200, 4400 and 4600 ring a bell? We speculate, however.
At any rate, a 550MHz card powered with 750MHz GDDR2 memory with a 256-Bit interface and eight pipelines? This sure sounds to us like an Nvidian comeback in the making.
