SemiAccurate has confirmed that nVIDIA did tape out the GF104 a few months ago, a mid ranged or lower end part based on the new Fermi architecture.   He has heard that the GF104 will be at many levels a GTX 480 that has been halved, with half the number of cores, ROPs and shaders.  In theory that will drop costs and more importantly reduce the heat that has caused the GTX 480 so much grief.  The information is only partial, but if you are curious about the near future of nVIDIA you should be able to glean some information.

“For GF104, likely called the GTS450 or GTS460, word on the street is that it will be cut in half from 512 theoretical shaders to 256. The real open question is what will the ‘uncore’ or non- shader section of the chip end up as, half of GF100 or the full uncore? GF100 is horribly weak in pixel ops. It has only 64 ROPs (Render Output Units), and that lack of pixel power shows up at higher resolutions.”

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