NVIDIA is poised to fire the first shot in the next battle of the war for 3D supremacy with today's official unveiling of their new NV40 GPU. The past two years have been especially hard fought. Both NVIDIA and ATI have been introducing new products every few months in their continuing effort to "one-up" the other in the eyes of influential enthusiasts, casual gamers, and budget conscious consumers looking for the best return on their investment. We've seen a myriad of new high-end, mid-range, and budget GPUs from NVIDIA and ATi, with each one designed to offer its own unique features and benefits at its specific price point. We saw the performance lead change hands between ATi and NVIDIA at the low and mid-range market segments a few times over the past couple of years, but ever since the introduction of the Radeon 9700 Pro back in August of 2002, ATi has held onto the top spot with a firm grasp in the sought after enthusiast segment. The R300, and the evolution of high-end "enthusiast-class" products based on its core technology, essentially remained one step ahead of NVIDIA's flagship NV3x products for all of 2003.



Link: Hot Hardware