For evaluation purposes, testing, playing and toying, Nvidia has been using A2 silicon in its pre-production Fermi-based Geforce cards. The company has quite a few of them inside its fortress and still has not shipped many samples outside of its offices, as it is afraid of leaks.

We have been informed that the A3 version of the chip should be the final one to ship in retail and that the current situation seems feasible for a January launch. However, this launch is likely to take place after CES.

The performance of A2 silicon is good but for some reason, Nvidia has decided to go for A3 silicon on its retail products. This inevitably caused a delay and forced Nvidia to push the product from November to January, and we hope for Nvidia's sake that this will be the last delay.

Multiple internal sources are claiming that January should be the time that the company might start selling Fermi-based Geforce desktop cards.