Nvidia was all about Tegra 3 and mobile computing at last week's Consumer Electronics Show, but the company hasn't forgotten about hardcore gamers awaiting their next-generation desktop products. In fact, according to recent rumors, their first 28nm "Kepler" cards may arrive a bit earlier than the previously expected March/April timeframe in response to AMD's successful launch of their GCN (Graphics Core Next) based Radeon 7970 graphics cards.

Chinese website ChipHell.com is reporting that Nvidia will launch the GeForce GTX 680 sometime in February and the card will supposedly offer similar performance to AMD's Radeon HD 7970, which currently holds the title of fastest single-GPU card on the planet.

Although detailed specifications for the upcoming cards are still unknown, the general consensus is that the GTX 680 cards will have 2GB of video memory on a 256- or 384-bit bus and have a core clock speed of 780MHz.

Previous rumors suggested Nvidia was timing the release of their new graphics cards to coincide with the launch of Intel's Ivy Bridge processors. A report in November also claimed that Nvidia was planning a bottom-to-top rollout for their 28nm Kepler architecture, starting with the entry-level GK107 GPU. The performance GK104 GPU that would presumably power the GeForce GTX 680 was slated for Q3 2012. Needless to say Nvidia doesn't comment on rumors and speculation so hopefully an official announcement will come soon.