The Inquirer wrote today that NVIDIA will present their NV40 chips at CeBit, but only for the press under a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The press will be able to see the NV40 Ultra and maybe the NV45 under NDA. The NV40 will be launched somewhre in April if everything goes well.
Nvidia partners are not too thrilled about this repeat of last year's show when the ladies and gentlemen of the press were shown the technology. Famously, the INQUIRER was turfed off the Nvidia booth.
Why are the Nvidia partners not reeling in ecstasy about this? They feel they need to show off a handstome Nvidia steed at CeBIT, and everyone will have bridge PCI Express cards based on NV3X or the later marchitecture NV19, NV37, NV39 and the card without proper codename NV38 + BR2 covered up by the PCX 5950 brand name. All these cards are old NV17, NV34, NV36 and NV38 with PCI to AGP bridge solutions. Nothing more.
Being called a "partner" of Nvidia is a slightly misleading term these days because some of them have flirted and even indulged in French kissing and heavy petting with with ATI. Only a few can claim to be faithful to Nvidia and not snogging ATI at the same time. Those faithless souls would very much like to show off NV40 or should we say NV4x as Nvidia has prepared NV41, NV41 and NV45, all spawns of the PCI Express devilry.
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