New high-end video cards coming soon!

nVidia is (thank god) going to release some new video cards later this month which will finally be an obvious choice over the aging but astoundingly long-lived 8800 GTX. The two cards being announced are what might have been called the 9900-series, but now go by the term GTX 200-series:

GTX 260 - 896MB of GDDR3 VRAM $450ish
GTX 280 - 1GB of GDDR3 VRAM $650ish

The larger amounts of memory and bandwidth in these cards are going to make them exactly what we'd hoped the 9800-series would be, but wasn't. Launch day is the 18th, but we don't know how quickly the cards will actually show up. If the 9800 launch was any indication, we won't have to wait long. Also, ATI's new RV770-based video cards will launch about the same time, and is aimed at the same market. It's too early to say if they will be worth considering yet, but June/July is getting interesting.

This news doesn't affect Ion sales, but if you're looking at our Reactors, you might want to wait a couple of weeks.