SemiAccurate (just gotta love that name) is reporting that XFX will be releasing a custom chip based on NVidia’s Fermi core. Now you have to color me very skeptical on this one. Think about how much it would cost to run a special batch of chips just for XFX. Why would NVidia do it? Could XFX afford it, and make a profit? Next, take a look at the card itself. As SemiAccurate points out, this will not fit in a regular ATX case, so it must be made to run on an open system. From the article:

The so far unspecified GPU is clocked at what appears to be a fairly slow 666MHz, but this custom chip from Nvidia has no less than 666 stream processors (also known as shaders) which should allow it to beat just about any card on the market when it comes to GPGPU performance, although with that many shaders we’d expect the card to perform extremely well in most games. The GPU has been paired up with 4GB of GDDR5 memory using a 666-bit bus and the memory operates on a 666MHz quad pumped bus which results in the equivalent data rate of 2,664MHz, which blows the competition away.

It will be interesting if this thing actually shows up. Do not expect it to be available in large quantities, and the price is rumored to be $1,390. Again, color me skeptical, but visit the article to learn more.

via SemiAccurate :: Sweden gets world exclusive GeForce Fermin card.

Update (Randall, 2/28/2010): Ok, this one is a funny story.  Seems the online store that SemiAccurate points to in the article, www.inet.se, was running an online contest.  They placed one phony product in their store, and the first person to find it won.  Guess what the phony product was? the “GeForce Fermin”.  Visit the page now and you’ll see “Visit our FaceBook page for more contests soon!”.

I thought it seemed pretty far fetched.  Lots of convenient 666’s in the specs, and the name (“Fermin”) just didn’t mesh.

Tags