I saw on Hot Hardware today that there will be two versions of the Geforce FX:

GeForce FX 5800 Ultra--500 Mhz core, 1GHz memory clock-- Many of our board venders have quoted $399 (US) as the price for their GeForce FX Ultra boards

GeForce FX 5800--400MHz core, 800MHz memory clock--this will be priced at a lower price point than the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra.

The card I checked out at Comdex was the high-end "Ultra" version...

Gee two versions who would have thought?

what is interesting is the changes made of the two versions original reports were that the ultra would have 256 MB of DDR II Nvidia wisely backed off that idea since it adds a lot to the cost of the card and does little for the performance.

it will be interesting to see the pricing of the 400 Mhz card if they sell it for 100.00 less than the Ultra thenit should be a good seller.
I can allready see the aftermarket crowd being excited by the 400 mhz version no doubt they will sell lots of cooling solutions for those who will purchase the 400 mhz version and want to pump it up to 500 mhz.

Now that's something I've waited to see.

Very nice to hear, now here's the bad news, nVidia might make the regular 5800 an MX card. Basicaly they will strip the DirectX 9.0 features off the card, like the Geforce 4 MX. Read more here at http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthrea...&threadid=4006

Any word of a software mod?

No, this is probably just a "real" down-clocked (or not overclocked if you like ) Geforce FX.

The NV31 and 34 will not be announced untill Cebit in March...

Oh I guess I misunderstood, sorry everybody. So what your saying is that it's going to be like the 9700 and the 9700 Pro?

Yes

Whats up with Nvidia and making 5 or 6 cards out of 1 new GPU.. Theres what - 6 diff GF4s? 4200,4400,4600,MX420,MX440,MX460. How goofy is that? GF2 MX200,MX400,GTS,Ti,Ultra. I dunno about the Geforce(1) but the GF3 is the only other card to have just 2 models of it. Why not just keep things simple: GF5 Ti 100, and GF5 Ti 200.

that is marketing. how to occupy market share.

similar examples in mobile world is: nokia.

so hard to understand ?

The Geforce 3 Had 3 Models :- Geforce 3, Geforce 3 Ti 200, Geforce 3 Ti 500 (and there are 64Mb and 128Mb Versions of the Ti200) (The Ti200 and Ti500 were cost reduced versions)

The Geforce 2 Range also had the GF2MX Orginal, and the GF2 GTS PRO, which was a slightly faster version of the GTS, that the Ti Replaced. (The MX200/MX400 & Ti were cost reduced versions)

GF3, GF3 Ti200, GF3 Ti500. 3 models of GF3.
GF4 the TiXXXX indicated the clock of the card. Now GF FX 5800 Ultra and GF FX 5800. Where the 5800 seems to relate to the core rather than the speeds of the core and memory on the card. I mean how many names does this dustbuster need. The got rid of the GTS, Ultra, Pro names and replaced them with numbers, now they seem to have both in place along with a new name FX which replaces the GF version number. I think Ultra makes it sound like 9700 Pro, and the other name changes will just confuse the customers. Sure they can tell that 5800 is higher than 4600, but FX > 4??? They should just call it "Geforce" and point people to the price tag to see which one is the best..

yes arris - Th3M1ghtyD8 already pointed out there were 3 models of the GF3 Marketing is silly, but hey - it makes money right?