Don't know if someone posted this in another thread. But it seems nvidia is a bit startled by the R420 and is going to move to the NV45 sooner than expected.
Source: Theinquirer
edit: it seems this has already been posted in the r420 thread.
What actually happened is that Nvidia recently learned about R420 marchitecture and this entire 12x1 story and, that they will eventually end up in second place and decided to can NV40 project and to go immediately with NV45.
Source: Theinquirer
edit: it seems this has already been posted in the r420 thread.