NV31: GeForce FX 5600 Ultra
NVIDIA will bring NV31 to market as the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, a performance-oriented product that will replace NV25/28-based graphics cards at a retail price of under $200. The GeForce FX 5600 Ultra's suggested $199 price tag lines the card up nicely against ATI's new Radeon 9600 Pro, which will become available in the same timeframe. Both cards will have four pixel pipelines with a single texture unit per pipe, but whether the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra can match the Radeon 9600 Pro's 400MHz core clock speed remains to be seen.

What might GeForce FX 5600 Ultras look like? Let's have a peek.

The GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, picture courtesy of NVIDIA

As you can see, the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra doesn't need a Dustbuster.

And there was much rejoicing.

Seriously, listen. You can actually hear the rejoicing because there isn't a vacuum whining in the background. The GeForce FX 5600 Ultra's reference heat sink looks like something one might find on a GeForce4 Ti 4600, and won't eat up any adjacent PCI slots. Still, it's usually a good idea to leave the closest PCI slot to an AGP card empty to improve air flow.

From the picture above, we can see that NVIDIA has gone with those nifty BGA memory chips on its GeForce FX 5600 Ultra reference card, which also uses a standard output port config. Thankfully, because NV31 integrates dual RAMDACs and dual TMDS transmitters, there's nothing stopping manufacturers from building GeForce FX 5600 Ultras with dual DVI or even dual VGA ports.

NVIDIA wouldn't confirm how many PCB layers are required by the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, but they did say that the boards would have fewer layers than the 12-layer GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. According to NVIDIA, plenty of different manufacturers building their own GeForce FX 5600 Ultra boards; we might even see a few manufacturers stray from NVIDIA's reference design with more unique GeForce FX 5600 Ultra-based products.

Although NVIDIA makes no official mention of a non-Ultra GeForce FX 5600, I wouldn't be surprised to see a few popping up in OEM systems. According to NVIDIA, "Ultra" is what sells on retail shelves, so manufacturers won't be putting much retail emphasis on non-Ultra products. However, I doubt that means that shelves won't be populated with non-Ultra GeForce FX 5800s since it appears that few GeForce FX 5800 Ultras will be available at all.

NV34: GeForce FX 5200 and 5200 Ultra
Unlike NV31, which only comes in one flavor (at least for now), NV34 will see action in the GeForce FX 5200 and GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, which will be priced at $99 and $149, respectively. The GeForce FX 5200 cards are aimed at mainstream markets, and will all but purge the GeForce4 from NVIDIA's line. Unfortunately, the GeForce4 MX isn't quite dead yet. The much-maligned MX will hang out in the sub-$80 price range as a value part, extending the incredible legacy of NVIDIA's GeForce2 architecture.

Depending on which GeForce FX 5200 we look at, ATI's Radeon 9600 or 9200 will be the competition. Unfortunately, without clock speeds or samples of the GeForce FX 5200 and GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, it's hard to speculate about the cards' performance relative to ATI's mainstream offerings. At the very least, the Radeon 9600's antialiasing performance should easily eclipse the GeForce FX 5200 Ultras because of the latter's lack of color and Z-compression.

NVIDIA's NV31 and NV34 press materials include pictures of the GeForce FX 5200 and 5200 Ultra, but the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra's picture is identical to that of the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra. Since we've already checked out that glossy, let's have a look at the vanilla GeForce FX 5200.

The GeForce FX 5200, picture courtesy of NVIDIA

How does a passively-cooled, DirectX 9-compatible graphics card for under $100 sound? Deadly, at least for the GeForce MX. Who wouldn't spend an extra $20 for a couple of extra pixel pipelines and a side order of DirectX 9?

If the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra's board layout is identical to the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, then the latter should be available with BGA memory chips. It looks like the vanilla GeForce FX 5200 will use older TSOP memory chips, but won't require any extra power, so it doesn't have an on-board power connector.

As with its GeForce FX 5600 Ultra cards, NVIDIA isn't revealing the board layer requirements of the GeForce FX 5200 other than to say that the boards will require fewer layers than the 12-layer GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. I'd expect the same manufacturers that will be building their own GeForce FX 5600 Ultra cards will also be making their own GeForce FX 5200s.