Nvidia Rolls Out Mid-Range DX10 Cards

Nvidia seems to be really enjoying itself, in the absence of its competitor ATI in the graphical card market. They first introduced the powerful enthusiast solution, the 8800 GTX, which offered DX-10 support and brought 16x AA to the mainstream. Soon after that, we were inundated with their new releases, the 8800 GTS 640 MB and 320 MB, which were scaled down version of the GTX chip.

Now looking to extend the same lead that they are enjoying in the high-end market, Nvidia today has rolled out its latest series of budget and mid-range cards. The cards that have been released are the 8600 GTS, 8600 GT and 8500 GT. All three ranges of cards feature Shader Model 4.0, and come equipped with GigaThread technology and NVIDIA's Quantum Effects physics processing technology.

The 8600 GTS with its price point of Rs. 14,000 (Sparkle brand) slips neatly into the mid-range performer arena that is currently held by Nvidia's own 7900 GS. It has support for 32-stream processors clocked at 1.45 GHz with its core and memory clock speeds set at 675 MHz and 1.0 GHz, respectively. The 8600 GT which is priced at Rs. 10,000 is virtually similar to the 8600 sporting the same 32 stream processors. However in comparison to the 8600 GTS model, the 8600 GT has its stream processors down clocked to 1.18 GHz. Its core and memory clock are also running at lower speeds of 540 MHz and 700 MHz respectively. The final card in this latest release roundup is the 8500 GT which is purely a budget card. The 8500 GT is priced at Rs. 7,620, sports 16 stream processors running at a speed of 900 MHz and has its core and memory clock speeds set at 450 MHz and 400 MHz respectively.

Nvidia thankfully for each of these new releases have not done a paper launch. Each of these cards are now available under the Sparkle brand-name which is available with Abacus Peripherals.