NVIDIA GTX 470/480 cards won't be available at launch

As the launch date nudges closer, the big talk of the town is of course NVIDIA's next-gen GTX 470 and GTX 480 graphics cards that bring DX11 support and expectedly a significant performance leap over anything we've seen up 'till now; these slated for a March 26 launch date.



However, there's a wee bit of sour news for those of you who already have every intent in getting a hold of one the minute it's available. while NVIDIA originally planned for cards to hit retail shelves only a few days after launch (March 29th apparently), our VGA reviewer has been given indication that the availability date has been forcefully pushed back by NV to April 6.

The most probable reason for this is due to NVIDIA not wanting to make samples available to reviewers until close to launch and then issuing out an optimized working driver for the cards very close to this time to prevent early leaks of performance figures on older non-optimized drivers that could affect initial impressions. To ensure partners don't accidently let leak a sample ahead of time, NVIDIA is tightly holding onto all cards until launch date, so the April 6 availability date gives enough time for cards to reach retailers.