It looks like the GT200 will *NOT* feature DX10.1 support.

That would really suck because DX10.1 has my dream features like incorporated (improved) FSAA support in all games, and many more.

Yeah, perhaps the GT200 was preemptively designed against ATI's upcoming R600 and then Nvidia just decided to hold on to that design (since the HD2900XT sucked so bad) and work on a lower-profile 65nm G92 design to replace the 8800GTX's high manufacturing costs. And then the R670 was released by surprise with DX10.1 support.

Lazy Nvidia resting on its laurels was not prepared for this, so had to release its current "prototype", the 8800GT. Notice the naming scheme? Just a GT, not even a GTS. The 9800GTX was supposed to be just a die shrink that replaced an 8800GTX, with equal performance--to be called something like 8800GTX 512 or 8800GTX 1GB.

Why is Nvidia being so slow right now, after the 8800GTS 512 in December? The design of that G92 was not yet ready for Nvidia's planned dual-chip GX2 card. ATI's jumping the gun on 850Mhz 3870X2 cards showed Nvidia that they could not clock their GX2 G92 chips at like 500-550 Mhz as planned. Now that Nvidia has to up the voltage and clock it at least 600 MHz, Nvidia is pretty stifled with how to cool it properly and make the design stable enough at those speeds without enormous power consumption.

That, with Nvidia's policy that the GX2 *has* to be released before the new GTX--pretty much explains it all, IMHO.

Meanwhile, Nvidia has been tweaking and optimizing the GT200 core ever since but perhaps they did not have enough time to incorporate DX10.1 support due to the headaches on that 9800GX2? Let's see...