Apparently, NVIDIA decided not to make a beautiful launch with all the bells and whistles for their GeForce4 family of graphics processors that offer AGP 8x support (code-named NV18 and NV28). The Santa Clara based GPU developer quietly started to supply their closest partners with the new chips and the graphics card manufacturers began to indicate AGP 8x support in their products. As the GeForce4 MX440 powered solutions are the most popular due to their low price, the first graphics cards to provide AGP 8x support are based on the mentioned technology. The GeForce4 Titanium line will pick up AGP 8x a bit later this year, to be precise, as soon as manufacturers sell all their current graphics cards.

Update: Here was an example of box design by one of the first-tier Taiwanese manufacturer, who asked us to remove it. We did so.

I have no information about pricing and availability of the novelties, however, I can assume that these graphics cards will be available in less than a month for a price that equals to current GeForce4 MX440 products. What is even more interesting is that there are going to be the GeForce4 MX 440 SE solutions. As you may remember from this news-story published in late August, NVIDIA decided to discontinue the GeForce4 MX460 and launch SE version of the ordinary GeForce4 MX440 with AGP 8x. That time I assumed that the newcomer will utilise BGA memory, as the MX460, hence, will provide amazing overclocking potential. Maybe some of graphics cards manufacturers like ASUS, SUMA and so on, will clock the “Special Edition” products higher by default.

Please keep in mind that the information published above is totally unofficial and can differ from the final details. As always, the time will dot all i-s.