Just as it happened last year with the Geforce GTX 295, Nvidia will most likely showcase Fermi-based cards in December and will start shipping them out in January.

Nvidia cannot make it in time for a late November or early December launch as it had originally planned, and the A2 silicon that has currently taped out of the fab will not be the final silicon. Nvidia will move to A3 silicon for its final retail products. Our multiple internal sources have confirmed that Nvidia has samples but it keeps them within the company, heavily guarded and they won’t be shipping in 2009.

Nvidia did the same with GTX 295 when a few select hacks got cards and posted reviews on December 18th, 2008 while the official launch took place on January 8th, 2009. Jensen is not happy with the slight product delays, but Nvidia wants to have massive availability at launch. On another note, the fact that ATI has sold out of its Radeon HD 5870 actually works in Nvidia’s favour. For those enthusiasts who demand DirectX 11 card for the holidays, the Radeon HD 5870 is going to be the only option until CES 2010 comes around.