Ati hasn't released the awaited R600 card and rumors suggest that it won't be able to do that at least until February. However, that didn't stop Nvidia from throwing another rock at them because the same rumors (I know you don't like them, but you can't live without them either) have confirmed that Nvidia is planning to release a cut down version of its 8800 GTS card.

The cheaper GeForce 8800 GTS will come with only 320MB of memory but aside from that it will possess all the other features found in its bigger brother. 320-bit memory bus, 500MHz clock-speed, 96 stream processors running at 1200MHz , 24 texture mapping units and 20 raster operation units will all be found on the new VGA card. The launch date will probably be around mid-February and that means Nvidia will have 3 DirectX 10 cards on the market before R600 arrives. Not bad, Nvidia, not bad at all!

Pricing of the new GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is expected to be at least $299 but no one knows for sure. Anyway, the same source suggests that it won't be higher priced than 7900 GTX and GeForce 7950 GT graphics boards so that means a maximum price of about $349. Coincidentally (or not) ATI/AMD is offering the Radeon X1950 XT in the same price range and I have a feeling that Nvidia's board will outperform the older DirectX 9 card produced by Ati.

However, the new 8800 GTS will also compete against older Nvidia products too but that won't be a problem since Nvidia always avoids these situations by lowering the price of its older segment. So it's double the hit for Nvidia and twice the fall for Ati. We'll see if the launch of R600 can change that but for now things are pretty clear.