Nvidia's NV38 and NV36 chips will debut this week if claims made by the Taiwanese tech press are to be believed.

Commenting on graphics card companies who offer products based on both ATI and Nvidia chips, DigiTimes notes that one such firm, Gigabyte, will announce cards based on the GeForce FX 5950 and GeForce FX 5700 on Wednesday this week.

The130nm 5700 (aka NV36) features DDR 2 SDRAM support across a 128-bit memory bus. Core and memory are both clocked between 450MHz and 500MHz, depending on board supplier.

The 5950, meanwhile, appears be a higher-clockable version of the GeForce FX 5900, internally known as NV35. The 5950 (aka NV38) was added to Nvidia's roadmap to fill the void left by the delayed NV40. The latter chip will be the company's first PCI Express part. Originally scheduled for a Q4 2003 release, NV40 may have been put back for technical reasons, but Nvidia could also be simply waiting for PCI Express support to come to desktop PCs.

PCI Express was originally expected to debut this quarter, but early to mid 2004 now seems more likely. ®