NV30 Sampling in October

This seems to be the most believable time frame for nv30 yet.

 

Did you ever think about that the BETA board not use a NV30?

I remeber that the BETA board from 3dfx for the VSA-100 (Voodoo 5 chips) was a monster of several Voodoo 2 (or 3) chips.
So maybe the BETA board use ASICS and maybe several NV25 chips(?)
It could be thrught, that there are BETA boards available and also the NV30 hasen't taped out. Nobody say that the silicon on the BETA boards is the same design than the NV30. So maybe the BETA boards are multichip (?) and the NV30 is only one (?)
So the CEO is right, NV30 not taped out and all the other who saw (?) BETA board are right too. And even the performance could be estimated with such a board.

Just my 2 cents

 

First, I want to stress that we cannot let this thread turn into another debate about the meaning of "taped out", or what NVidia's tapeout-to-market claims are, or who said what, or anything like that. Remeber guys, this is Beyond3D!

I have to say that these dates are the most reasonable ones I've seen in the past few months. Even if it's taped out now, getting them available by Christmas would imply a span of only 20 weeks, which is very hard for a totally new graphics architecture (refreshes can be done faster quite easily, as all of you know). I suppose NVidia may be able to squeeze a good sample for a review before Christmas, but good luck finding one to buy.

Some of you guys work in the graphics industry, but for the others: If you knew how long ago the first silicon came back for R300, you might be surprised. Even these times are very fast for the silicon industry.