Earlier than i expected..
anybody think nvidia are going to be far ahead with their gt300? the time gap makes me think so..
then again who knows
No, the gt300 won't be leagues ahead for several reasons, the chip was designed to be released well, early this year, failed respins and crappy TSMC doesn't give them licence to change a core thats been in the works for likely between a 18-24months. You can't test it on the new 40nm when its finally out, find it doesn't work and add a massive number of shaders before trying again.
Thats the problem with late/non working cores you get them working you don't have time to change them. The 2900xt didn't have 50% shaders added because it was late and they were forced to move it back to 90nm.
Personally I'm thinking the speed increase from multithreading and the simple design of dx11 will lend itself to far more programability, which will lend itself to being better able to use the clusters of SP's on AMD cards better. Theres no efficiency to be gained by Nvidia's cards, theres 240 shaders, they can all basically work every time. AMD however have clusters, sometimes it can get the full power out, sometimes only 1/5, averages to somewhere in the middle because its hard to code for. IT should get easier and easier to code for as gaming and DX versions move towards more programability though.
Theres even the chance that the GT300 will not hit the clock speeds it needs, a la 2900xt, because the process simply isn't up to what it was designed to do. The higher shader clock on the Nvidia architechture is at a distinct disadvantage due to leaky power processes being worse the higher the speed.
Then again, that could hurt AMD just as easily, they may have wanted the core to come at at 1Ghz but the leakage might mean they can only get stability at 850Mhz. Theres a lot to be seen and no matter what both companies designed and expected to be ready, TSMC have had a big hand in changing their plans.