Nvidia is expected to unveil the GeForce GT210, GT220 and GT240 in the fourth quarter. The cards will perform at 9400-9500GT levels and use DirectX 10.1.
The GT210 will come with 24-Cores, a 64-Bit Memory Bus, 512MB of DDR2 or DDR3 RAM clocked at 800MHz, and GPU and Shader units clocked at 600MHz and 1425MHz, respectively.
The GT220 has 48 processing cores to make it a bit faster, a 128-Bit Memory Bus, 1GB of RAM running at 1600MHz, and GPU and Shader clocks of 625MHz and 1375MHz, respectively.
Both of these will arrive just before the GT300 series in December.
AMD has lined up its troops to start appearing in October. These include the ATI Radeon HD 5770 and HD 5750. Both will come with 1GB GDDR5 memories and 128-bit memory interfaces.
The HD 5750 will have all the features of its higher end counterpart like 40nm, DX11, Eyefinity technology, ATI Stream, UVD2, and GDDR5 memory. It will be relatively cheap as chips as GPUs go.
The ATI Radeon HD 5870 X2 and Radeon HD 5850 X2 should be in the shops in November. These feature 25 per cent more shader processors compared to the RV770 GPUs. It looks like a seriously good chip which is much smaller than previous efforts.
But it looks like the sales pitches between the two sides will centre around DirectX11.
AMD seems to think that the world plus dog is ready for it while Nvidia is still lagging. The fact that Nvidia's GT210, GT220 and GT240 are an 'upgrade' to DirectX10.1 shows that the Green Goblin is either taking a conservative approach or can't produce DirectX11 capable parts yet.
Nvidia's GeForce G210 is for the budget conscious while the GT220 will be for the mainstream and the GT240 for gamers.
AMD will target its Radeon HD 5770 and 5750 into the $150 to $200 market and is going to use the Radeon HD 5890 as a reserve force if the battle gets tough.
Our sources indicate that Nvidia is going to start the war off by announcing a range of price cuts.
The Green Goblin has to move fast if it wants to match AMD in this war. In the first quarter of 2010, AMD will launch entry-level GPUs codenamed Redwood and Cedar, while Nvidia has nothing to offer and its technology could be perceived as being out-of-date if AMD convinces everyone that DirectX11 is the way forward. Either way, these will be interesting times.