After yesterday's barrage of show floor news, we thought we'd spend the day trying to get in 'behind closed doors' instead of walking the show floor.

The last place we thought we'd find information on NV10, NVIDIA's next generation chip set, was in Taiwan. Sure, we knew that TNT2 chipsets are currently selling like hot cakes but NV10? So here's the scoop- we were told be several sources close to NVIDIA that the NV10 would first and foremost be manufactured on a .18micron layer process (a further die shrink down from .25). Not only will this allow for reduced heat emission but in addition, you can obviously expect higher clock speeds (we're unsure as to what sort of memory speeds will be available when the part ships). We'll try and confirm this by Friday when we are scheduled to meet with a Senior VP of the TSMC FAB, which both NVIDIA and 3dfx use for their respective chipsets.

Most interestingly was the identical line being touted by the aforementioned sources with regards to the projected performance of the NV10, which is said to be somewhere in the region of four times that of the TNT2 (the current 350MegaTexel/second fill rate is already high). Many of you will already know that NVIDIA is aiming to take 3D graphics into the 'next stage of realism' by sporting hardware T&L (transformation & lighting), clipping and geometry features on-chip but what if we told you that this will be backed up by a 64MB-128MB memory specification? Obviously full AGP 4X support will increase the memory bandwidth considerably too.

NVIDIA has always claimed that the TNT2 was "only the beginning"… OEMs that we spoke to were already committed to the NV10 (which is yet to get an official name), which they stated should start shipping by October. Upon our own investigation, we reckon that a late Q4 release is more likely, what with the delay to both the 820chipset (upon which so much rides upon) and the AGP 4X occurring due to RAMBUS problems. Anything else? Well it looks as though NV20 (the chip following NV10) will be the first NVIDIA chip to sport multiple processors, so you'll have to wait a good while longer for that sort of raw horsepower.