14 DAY TRIAL // Memory producer and merchant Mushkin announced, back in December, that it would release a new line of graphics cards based on Nvidia's GeForce 8800GT. Its specifications were not disclosed at the time, but they went public as of today, when the company has started shipping the first batch of its graphics cards to worldwide retailers and system integrators.
It seems that Mushkin's video card will be be a tweaked version of 8800 GT. It is commercially known as the "8800GT Mushkin XP Overclocked Edition bulk" and features an internal core clock of 700MHz, a shader of 1750MHz and a memory clock of 975MHz.
Since the standard 8800GT chipset from NVidia operates at a stock core speed of 650MHz and 900MHz for the memory clock (often referred to as 1800MHZ due to DDR memory - GDDR3 memory actually), the results are less than spectacular. In fact, they are below the other producers' offerings at the time of writing.
The current batch that will take off soon is labeled as "bulk" edition, but we can assume that there will be a retail version soon, available either through the retailers' networks or through Mushkin's memory channel partners.
Another memory manufacturer, Crucial, made a shy attempt at building their own video cards some time ago, but the project was aborted in its early stage. Mushkin states that it has secured a solid partner in Taiwan" to take care of the video cards' manufacturing process.
Although it is pretty unwise for the company to leave its primary business aside and rush building a new product outside its area of expertise, the 800GT Mushkin XP Overclocked Edition may prove quite a success, given the fact that it is likely to be built with the company's own GDDR3 memory modules.
Currently, there is no word on pricing and retail availability of the Mushkin graphics cards, but they are expected to start retailing soon.