As early as the first quarter of 2006, ATI and nVidia will both be hitting the market with 90nm process GPUs. The R580 series from ATI and two of the 7xxx series from nVidia are set to both have mass shipments in just a few months time. Cards include the next revisions of the X1800, X1600 and X1300, the GeForce 7600 and the GeForce 7200. ATI is still having reported supply issues, with only the X1300 able to meet demand, giving nVidia more leeway into a market they have done very well in the past year with "no paper launches".
"As reported on November 7, an upstream component shortage has led to tight supplies of ATI's GPUs including the Radeon 9250, X300, X550 and its recently launched Radeon X1000 family. Supplies of ATI's Radeon X1000 series should improve significantly by the first quarter of next year, according to the makers."
Reduction in process almost directly correlates to a reduction in power consumption, increase in performance potentials and eventual reduction in prices, which is nothing but good all around. Video cards are now often replacing processors as the most power-hungry components in systems, and anything to make them cooler is good.