14 DAY TRIAL // It has become somewhat of a trend for NVIDIA's graphics cards to pop up at various online retailers before they are launched officially. We've seen this happen with the company's current lineup, and we are once again witnessing the same thing with one of its upcoming products. However, before jumping to any conclusions, we should mention that this graphics card is designed with an entry-level user in mind, so the last thing we should do would be to expect high levels of performance from it.
What we should expect though, is a bang for the buck, as this card will come with a rather impressively low price tag attached to it. According to a listing on the German geizhals.eu website, interested parties can purchase the upcoming NVIDIA card for about ?30. And, if you still happen to have nagging doubts about which card in particular we're talking about, might as well set the record straights: it's the G98-based GeForce 9300GS. Given the pricing and all that we already we know of this card, it suddenly becomes clearer that this is, indeed, a product meant to fit the requirements of entry-level users.
Even if it isn't yet official, we still have a bunch of details on it, thanks to the above-mentioned website. First of all, we must note that we're dealing with a 55nm-based card, so it should probably be a good overclocker. The listed card is manufactured by Sparkle and will provide its users with 256MB of DDR2 memory, while the GPU and Shaders have been clocked at 567MHz and 1400MHz, respectively. Built with 16 Stream processors and 8 texture units, it provides support for Microsoft's DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0, which means users will probably enjoy a decent Windows Vista experience.
It is yet unclear when the card will become official but, granted this listing is correct, we should get to hear of NVIDIA's announcement very soon. In fact, the card could actually be part of an entirely new lineup of 55nm-based GeForce cards, but that too is still pending confirmation.