And so it begins ... well, the rumor mill that is. According to reports on the web the next-gen DX11 class based GF100 chip (known under the Fermi family name) graphics cards based on the GPU will be available in early December.

It is also said that the company is now taking pre-orders for the GF100 GPU, without any guarantees on the final shipping date for and to it's partners. Designed on the 40nm fab process, the NVIDIA GF100 graphics processing unit is expected to end-up faster than AMD's Radeon HD 5870 flagship card, although we have yet to receive specific numbers, features and information.

The company will target the workstation and HPC markets first, as the Fermi architecture is expected to deliver a number of features and performance enhancements in those segments.

AMD's on it's end is preparing for Fermi with their upcoming Radeon HD 5970 product (X2) currently popping up on the web, there are also questions of how the single-GPU GF100 graphics card will perform against a dual-GPU solution from AMD. AMD's Hemlock graphics cards (5970) might be released within the next 2-3 weeks already.

Considering the source, we should take all of this with a grain of salt, as it's better to wait on the actual debut of the much anticipated card.