NVIDIA has three new graphics cards on the market for low to medium end prices but with high end capabilities. The GeForce 8600 GTS, 8600 GT and the 8500 GT include processor advantages that were previously only capable in the 8800 series of cards including Shader Model 4.0 support, GigaThread technology, Quantum Effects physics processing capability and the Lumenex engine which gives 128-bit floating point HDR rendering performance and anti-aliasing levels of 16x.

The 8600 GTS is the big boy of the three, is most expensive ($229) and features 32-stream processors clocked at 1.45 GHz and reference core and memory clock speeds at 675 MHz and 1.0 GHz, respectively.

The 8600 GT ($159) is a slight step down, offering shader clock speed at 1.18 GHz (but at the same 32-stream rate) while the reference core and memory clock speeds are set at 540 …

NVIDIA has announced two of high-end graphics processors with a corresponding high price. These units aren’t meant to be kicking pixels around for “World of Warcraft” or “Supreme Commander” but are intended for high performance rendering computers used in engineering design firms, scientific research, medical device designers and special effects companies.

The NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600 and Quadro FX 5600 have new unified architecture designs, 1.5 GB frame buffers, next generation vertex and pixel programmability, and utilize GPU computing for their visualization problems. The Quadros also pump out faster and bigger 3D texturing (up to 8K by 8K images can be generated), have dual-link connectivity, smoother video playback, more accurate color and image scaling for SD and HD content.

If you’re thinking that this kind of power would sound perfect inside your rig, you can pick them …

If you’re coming up a little short when opening your wallet to upgrade your graphics card, Nvidia’s new GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB may help ease your suffering.

With half the memory as its big brother, this GTS may not seem like such a buy at first – until you notice that the price is $100 less and the specs are pretty decent if you want to enjoy good Direct X 10 gaming action.

The 320 MB G80 card runs at 500 MHz, the same clock frequency as the 640 MB version and just 75 Mhertz slower than the GTX sugar daddy GeForce card (which is double the price.) Also, this new GTS has its memory bandwidth upper capacity at 64 GB/sec and a texture fill rate of 24 billion/sec, so unless you really, really need faster texture mapping and lighting effects, you’ll be …

In previous articles about NVIDIA Cards ( BFG GeForce 8800 GTS and Asus EN8800 GTX ) we mentioned the fact that the only thing missing was the DirectX 10 games. That’s true but there is also something else missing that’s pretty vital, the drivers! It appears that NVIDIA has delayed releasing drivers to the general public for the N80 line of video cards.

From NVIDIA’s Vista page: ** GeForce 8800 requires updated drivers for Vista, which will be available to download when Vista is available at retail in late January..

So all of you gamers that are anxious to get your hands on this line of cards to try out the performance in Vista may want to hold off at least until the end of January. Of course if you are planning on sticking with Windows …

So you want a DirectX 10 Video card but you don’t want to sell a kidney? The BFG GeForce 8800 GTS might be for you. Not that this video card is cheap. The retail price is around $500 dollars. Its only cheap when you compare it to a card like the ASUS EN8800 GTX.

So what does five hundred bucks get you? A pretty good video card, that’s what.

While the GTX model mentioned above has 768 MB of memory (wow) this card only has 640 MB. It has a narrower memory path than the GTX. That means that fewer bites can transfer from the memory to the processor at one time.

The GTS does support SLI. But spending a cool grand on two 8800 GTS’s might seem like overkill …

Prepare for the next generation of video cards. DirectX 10 is right around the corner with Vista and with it the graphics upgrade games have been waiting for. In fact, DirectX 10 might be the only compelling reason to upgrade to Vista. If the screen shots we’ve seen are any indication, graphics are going to get a whole lot better.

Of course with new software comes need for new hardware that supports it. The next generation cards are coming out. The Asus EN8800 GTX is a high end video card that supports DirectX 10 and DirectX 9. In fact DirectX 9 support is incredible. As many games will still use DirectX 9 in the foreseeable future a card like this might be worth it to kick up the graphics on today’s …

NVIDIA Corporation today introduced two new product families that are sure to maintain the reign of the PC as the ultimate gaming platform. These new products families represent the hardware foundation that will allow users to start building their own definitive PC gaming platforms that take advantage of Microsoft’s DirectX 10 and Windows Vista.

The GeForce 8800 graphics processing unit (GPU) and the NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI media and communications processor are designed specifically for Intel Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo processors. In addition, the GeForce 8800 GPUs are the world’s first to support Microsoft DirectX 10, which will be introduced with Microsoft Windows Vista. More than 20 DirectX 10 titles have been developed to take advantage of next-generation NVIDIA GPUs.

“We set out to build the ultimate platform for PC gaming and high-definition video,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO at

…

NVIDIA has now made it possible for you to watch HD DVD or Blu-ray movies on your PC with some new video drivers having PureVideo HD technology. The PureVideo technology encompasses multiple features that will help improve the video portion of your multimedia experience with your PC.

Aside from just creating the drivers to support the HD DVD and Blu-ray formats, PureVideo provides some hardware acceleration to decode H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 movies that will make images clearer than normal, and up to six times the detail of a regular DVD movie. The driver software will also help your PC run a little more efficiently when using multiple applications since it takes on some of the video processing instead of taxing the PC’s CPU and 3D engine.

“This is a milestone in PC entertainment,” stated Scott Vouri who is general manager of multimedia at …