The new high-end cards from nVidia were "launched" today: the GTX 260 and the GTX 280. Here's a chart of the most important specs, compared to the 9800-series cards they're effectively replacing. We also included the 8800 GTX, which until now was a better choice than the 9800 cards for gamers with 24" or larger monitors:


The G92-based 9800 cards were a bit disappointing - the GPU was faster than the previous kings of video (the G80-based 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra) but the memory bandwith and video memory were smaller, resulting in older technology beating out the newer in many cases.

That isn't going to happen this time around. The new cards have higher bandwidth and more video memory than either the 9800 or 8800 cards, along with a beast of a GPU that doubles the number of transistors. At $400, the GTX 260 is a clear choice over the 8800 GTX (finally) and unless Quad-SLI suddenly picks up a huge burst of effectiveness out of the blue, there's no reason to buy a 9800 GX2 any more either. (Don't be fooled by the 256 stream processors on the GX2 - half is dedicated to each GPU, and the net effect is less than a single card with that many SPs.)

In fact, the $400 GTX 260 is probably going to outperform the 9800 GTX by a wide enough margin that saving $100 won't justify choosing the latter, but we'll post benchmarks along those lines as soon as we get one.

Which brings us to availability. The GTX 280 is up to bat first, supposedly shipping in the next few days. Time will tell if this card is simply overpriced, which is a definite possibility. The GTX 260 should follow sometime in the next two weeks. We'll post some more information shortly.