WE HEAR Nvidia is working hard to bring a DirectX 10 part to the mainstream market. Once Vista is out and real and we guess that will be during January, there will be a huge gap between the DirectX 10 API and the hardware that supports it.

At that time Nvidia's G80 boards - Geforce 8800 GTX and GTS - are going to be the only two products to support Direct X 10. ATI's R600 is delayed until at least February, while G80 launches on the 7th of November just some three weeks from now.

Nvidia is keeping up with its deadlines and is working hard on its next G8x mainstream part. It schedules it for spring probably Cebit-ish time - March or so, 2007. We don’t know the specs but we believe that it won't be unified, either as it will derived from the G80 marchitecture.

An entry level, sub $99 DirectX 10 part should also follow around spring time, at least in Nvidia's case.

NVIDIA is ready to counter the Triple Play

With the release of the G80, NVIDIA will also release a new engine dubbed Quantum physics engine. Quantum Effects Technology is similar (at least in spirit) to NVIDIA's PureVideo Technology -- a dedicated layer on the GPU for physics calculations. A few documents alluding to this new engine appeared on public FTP mirrors late last week.

Quantum utilizes some of the shaders from NVIDIA's G80 processor specifically for physics calculations. Physics calculations on GPUs are nothing new; ATI totes similar technology for its Stream Computing initiative and for the Triple Play physics.

NVIDIA and Havok partnered up this year claiming that SLI systems would get massive performance gains by utilizing additional GeForce GPUs as physics processors. Quantum may be the fruits of that partnership, though NVIDIA documentation clearly states that Quantum will work just fine without SLI.

NVIDIA's documentation claims Quantum will specifically compete with AGEIA's PhysX, yet does not mention who is providing the middleware. Given that there are only two acts in town right now, it would be safe to say Havok has a hand in the Quantum engine.

The most important aspect of the leaked documentation are the specs revealed:

- Unified Shader Architecture;
- Support FP16 HDR+MSAA;
- Support GDDR4 memories;
- Close to 700M transistors (G71 - 278M / G70 - 302M);
- New AA mode: VCAA;
- Core clock scalable up to 1.5GHz;
- Shader performance: 2x Pixel/12x Vertex over G71;
- 8 TCPs & 128 stream processors;
- Much more efficient than traditional architecture;
- 384-bit memory interface (256-bit+128-bit);
- 768MB memory size (512MB+256MB)

The unified shader architecture suggests, what the experts have been saying for a while now, that the cards will be support DX10.

According to the same, leaked, information the G80 will surface in November in two varieties, the GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GT priced at a mere USD 649 and USD 449-499 respectively. The GTX model (higher-end) will feature a 384-bit memory interface, a hybrid water and air cooler and 7 TCPs while the GT will have a 320-bit memory interface, a standard air cooler, and 6 TCPs.

No one has actually explained what TCP actually stands for although Techreport has uncovered an nVidia patent which refers to thread control processors. According to the same patent these TCPs will be used to set the function of the unified shader processors.