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There’s good news and bad news; the bad news is that the GTX 400 series has been pushed back to April 6th. The good news is that it’s only in reference to retail supply and not the actual NDA; so come the 26th of March we’ll all know what performance will be.

If you thought that you were going to pick one up retail that day though you where wrong, the original date for stock to be selling was the 29th but now it seems to be April 6th.

This morning we heard that NVIDIA had changed the strategy for sending samples; instead of partners sending them out NVIDIA are taking charge and sending out themselves. We’re not 100% sure why they’re doing this but it could be because NVIDIA doesn’t want any leaks on the results until the 26th. Quite often we see NVIDIA push a driver to us at the last minute and it’s possible that this could happen with the GTX 400 series.

If performance numbers come out on an older driver it’s possible that performance won’t be as good and in turn could seal the fate of the new series before it’s even officially released. Holding cards back from its partners though until launch means that it’s going to take a little longer for the cards to hit retail.

So while it’s not great news in the event you want to pick up a GTX 480 on the 26th it doesn’t change the fact that come 10 days time we’ll know how the model performs.

While we wait for NVIDIA to release the exciting end of its new product line up; read not GT 220 and GT 240 end. ATI are finishing off the other end with the launch of some new models in February which include the HD 5570 and HD 5450.

I mentioned in December that the HD 5400, HD 5500 and HD 5600 where all due out January 7th, as that date got closer though it was clear this wasn’t going to happen, instead the HD 5600 launched not long after the original date while the HD 5400 and HD 5500 series which where suppose to launch at CES got pushed back to an unknown date.

The good news though is that today I’ve received NDA dates for the new series, the HD 5450 is ready to ship as of today, reviews will be going live on February 4th. The HD 5570 will ship a day or two later and it’s launch date has been set for February 9th.

As for the HD 5830 a January 5th date is extremely unlikely now as I mentioned last week since no company has samples ready. When we do get more information on the model though I’ll be sure to let you know.

For now though some more budget HD 5000 series cards are going to have to do, keep an eye out in this week’s *Knock Knock* Delivery post to see if our samples have arrived. If anything changes I’ll be sure to let you know and don’t forget when the launch is lifted you’ll be able to see my reviews over at TweakTown.com.

Image Note: Above image is leaked HD 5400 image from the middle of January. Can’t confirm nor deny this is what it looks like.

Word getting around as of late is that the HD 5830 is due to be released February 5th.  Originally the NDA date was the week of the 25th of January. What that means is that the NDA was going to come off the card between the 25th of January and the 31st. This seems to have been officially pushed back due to an issue with ASIC.

At the moment we’ve been told that a new one has been resent and the launch has been postponed to a new day. As for that new date we’re not sure yet. At the moment it seems unlikely that an exact day has been given like February 5th which is a Friday. The next day we’ll hear for the launch of the card will be a week of one, be that the 1st of February, the 8th or later.

Once we have the week of date as we draw closer to the launch date we’ll receive an exact day. This isn’t the first time ATI have done this, the same happened with the HD 5670, I received my sample the second week of January, with a launch date of the week of the 11th of January. On the 8th that date was updated to the actual release date being the 14th.

It make sense that ATI will begin to move their launch strategy to this as it takes a lot of pressure off the company. Instead of working to a day they now only have to work towards a week, it also allows the company to get a last minute driver update out in the event reviewers are seeing a major issue.