Back on Tuesday NVIDIA put out a quick teaser about a new video card that would be launching today. As virtually all of you correctly guessed, it was the GeForce GTX 590, NVIDIA’s latest dual-GPU monster. Coming only two weeks after the launch of the Radeon HD 6990, NVIDIA wants their spot back as the single card king, and it’s the GTX 590 that will fight for it. But does the GTX 590 have what it takes to dethrone the 6990 so soon? Let’s find out.

Throughout the lifetime of the 400 series, NVIDIA launched 4 GPUs: GF100, GF104, GF106, and GF108. Launched in that respective order, they became the GTX 480, GTX 460, GTS 450, and GT 430. One of the interesting things from the resulting products was that with the exception of the GT 430, NVIDIA launched each product with a less than fully populated GPU, shipping with different configurations of disabled shaders, ROPs, and memory controllers. NVIDIA has never fully opened up on why this is – be it for technical or competitive reasons – but ultimately GF100/GF104/GF106 never had the chance to fully spread their wings as 400 series parts.

It’s the 500 series that has corrected this. Starting with the GTX 580 in November of 2010, NVIDIA has been launching GPUs built on a refined transistor design with all functional units enabled. Coupled with a hearty boost in clockspeed, the performance gains have been quite notable given that this is still on the same 40nm process with a die size effectively unchanged. Thus after GTX 560 and the GF114 GPU in January, it’s time for the 3^rd and final of the originally scaled down Fermi GPUs to be set loose: GF106. Reincarnated as GF116, it’s the fully enabled GPU that powers NVIDIA’s latest card, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti.

There's little doubt in our minds that the GF100/GTX 480 launch wasn't quite what NVIDIA was hoping for. It did end up being the fastest single GPU card on the market, but when it came to heat and noise it didn't fare so well. What could have been an amazing card became a reasonable card, but a card with caveats.

But they say time heals all wounds. With GF100 out the door NVIDIA has had a chance to examine their design, and TSMC the chance to work the last kinks out of their 40nm process. GF100 was the first Fermi chip, and it would not be the last. With a lesson in hand and a plan in mind, NVIDIA went back to the drawing board to fix and enhance GF100. The end result: GF110, the next iteration of Fermi. Hot out of the oven, it is launching first in the consumer space and is forming the backbone of the first card in NVIDIA’s next GeForce series: GeForce 500. Launching today is the first such card, the GF110-powered GeForce GTX 580.

It’s been 7 months since the launch of the first Fermi cards, and at long last we’re here: we’ve reached the end of the road on the Fermi launch. Today NVIDIA is launching the final GPU in the first-generation Fermi stack into the add-in card market, launching the GeForce GT 430 and the GF108 GPU that powers it. After months of launches and quite a bit of anticipation we have the complete picture of Fermi, from the massive GTX 480 to today’s tiny GT 430.

For the GT 430, NVIDIA is taking an interesting position. AMD and NVIDIA like to talk up their cheaper cards’ capabilities in HTPC environments but this is normally in the guise of an added feature. Rarely do we see a card launched on one or two features and today is one of those launches. NVIDIA believes that they’ve made the ultimate HTPC card, and that’s the line they’re going to be using to sell it; gamers need not apply. So just what is NVIDIA up to, and do they really have the new king of the HTPC cards? Let’s find out.

After the drawn out launch of GF100 and the GTX 400 series earlier this year, NVIDIA has been firing on all cylinders when it comes to the launch of the rest of the Fermi family. In July we saw the launch of the GF104 GPU and the GTX 460 it powers, providing a surprising tweak to the Fermi architecture on what should have been a simple waterfall part, and in the process trampling AMD’s Radeon HD 5830 at the $200 price point. For the first time in over a year we saw an NVIDIA product come out that was hyper-competitive on performance and pricing, the kind of competition we sorely miss.

Now 2 months after that launch we’re going to find out if lightning strikes twice. Today NVIDIA is launching the next desktop video card in the 400 series: GTS 450 Powering it is their new Fermi family GPU – GF106 – the next in the line of successively smaller Fermi GPUs for cheaper products. Targeted directly against AMD’s Radeon HD 5700 series, does it have what it takes to dethrone AMD's mainstream lineup?