Nvidia's mainstream market version of its GT300 / Fermi chip is scheduled for a Q1 2010 launch. This is not particularly good news for the company as ATI is already shipping its mainstream card based on the Juniper chip at pricing around €130 / $169 for the more expensive parts. Of course, we are talking about the HD 5770 and HD 5750 that both started shipping yesterday.

In perspective, Fermi will be released as a performance chip card, a high-end single chip card, and a dual-GPU card that might launch a few weeks later.

When it comes to entry level and mainstream segments, we will most likely have to wait until around March, if not even later. Despite the huge flexibility of Nvidia's Fermi GF100 architecture, it still takes time to derive slower performing chips from the original design.

We have a feeling that ATI might capture a much bigger piece of the DirectX 11 market than anyone expected due to being first to the market and shipping months before its competition. Both of these factors are very beneficial for raking in good sales numbers. While Nvidia’s mainstream cards might end up faster, they will unfortunately come a month behind the competition.