Now that we are in November, and the holiday season, the one where everyone tends to spend up big, is just around the corner, Nvidia wants a piece of the pie and we believe they are going to get it. While the GeForce 8800 GTX has run virtually unopposed in the high-end market for almost a year now, AMD/ATI were able to make a move on the mid-range performance market with the Radeon HD 2900XT, which has given the GeForce 8800 GTS graphics cards quite a run for their money.

The mainstream market has really suffered this time round, with the GeForce 8600 series being a woeful option for gamers and the Radeon HD 2600 series was no better. Nvidia made a half hearted effort to try and deliver more performance to gamers with a 320MB version of the GeForce 8800 GTS. With a price tag of $300 US this was hardly an option for everyone, despite the fact that the performance was quite good at this price point. However with little pressure from AMD/ATI, there was really no reason for Nvidia to become more competitive.

Given the fact that Nvidia did spend around 400 million dollars developing the GeForce 8800 architecture, it would make sense that they want to make as much as they can from the technology. Therefore the clever people at Nvidia have come up with a new model based on the GeForce 8800 architecture that has already created a lot of attention for itself right before the holiday spending season. The GeForce 8800 GT is much more than the GeForce 8800 GTS (320MB) graphics card was or even the GeForce 8800 Ultra. While the 8800 GTS (320MB) graphics card was $100 cheaper, it just featured half as much memory as the 640MB version, while the 8800 Ultra was just an overclocked 8800 GTX with a silly price tag.

The GeForce 8800 GT is neither of these things and it’s much better than both of them. Actually the 8800 GT is one of those graphics cards we all wish existed but never does. The GeForce 8800 GT offers near GTX performance, yet costs less than even the 8800 GTS (320MB) graphics card. So essentially the 8800 GT has eliminated the 8800 GTS 320/640MB graphics cards and really makes the GeForce 8800 GTX pointless given it costs nearly twice as much. While this might not make much sense now, it is actually a very clever move on Nvidia’s behalf.

For one thing the Radeon HD 3800 series is just around the corner, and Nvidia will no doubt be replacing their 8800 series with the 8900 series very soon as well. So really the GeForce 8800 series is on the brink of extinction, yet Nvidia may have found a way to get them selling like hot cakes again. As I mentioned earlier the 8800 GT is not just another typical GeForce 8800 graphics card with an altered core and memory clock frequency. Nor does it come with an unusual amount of memory, though it is the first 8800 series card to come in 512MB and 256MB flavours.

Rather the GeForce 8800 GT is special because it is built around the new G92 architecture which features a 65nm design. The 8800 GT also supports PCIe 2.0 and does away with PureVideo HD with VP1 replacing it, with PureVideo HD with VP2 along with a BSP Engine and AES128 Engine. The core configuration is also very impressive and in many ways it is superior to that of the 8800 GTX. The best part about the new GeForce 8800 GT is that it can already be purchased online for as little as $260 US, which was the asking price for an 8600 GTS not that long ago.