Those in attendance at the PDXLAN 16.5 gaming event caught a first-hand glimpse of Nvidia’s future GPU plans, courtesy of technical marketing director Tom Petersen. Nvidia rallied up the crowd with metrics on a new piece of dedicated graphics hardware that is presumed to be the oft-rumored GTX580.

According to Petersen, the unreleased card boasts a robust vapor cooling system, offering quieter operating conditions over Nvidia’s previous-generation behemoth, the GTX 480 — which received quite a bit of flak for its high power consumption levels and heat output.

Petersen topped off the presentation with a tessellation-focused demo of Aliens vs. Triangles, followed a brief segment of silky-smooth Black Ops gameplay on PC.

Rumors point to a November release date for the GTX 580, possibly as soon as next week. AMD is poised to counter with its yet-to-be revealed 6900 series, which will effectively replace last year’s DX11 pioneers, the HD5870 and HD5850.

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