ATI's upcoming 55nm RV790 is the first new chip to come from ATI in the next quarter. We were told to expect it in April time and, at the same time, we learned that RV740, ATI's first desktop 40nm chip should start shipping a bit later.
ATI focuses on the mobile side and has Asus' first notebook
design win with 40nm RV740, while desktop parts might start shipping either in
late April or in early May time. ATI definitely have caught Nvidia by surprise
as Nvidia simply didn’t believe that ATI will beat them to a new manufacturing
process once again.
ATI was faster to transition to 65nm, 55nm and now even 40nm
so Nvidia will have to wait for 32nm to try to beat ATI which is faster with
new shrunk chips. We still have to see Nvidia’s first 40nm GPUs or even hear solid
news about the state and availability of such products.