NVIDIA on Monday introduced its GeForce 6800 GS graphics card that brings performance of the GeForce 6800 GT graphics card to mainstream price points.

The announcement and th eimmediate availability of the new cards could add pressure on ATI Technologies, who has not yet launched its competitive RADEON X1600 XT products to end-users.

Based on the GeForce 6 architecture, the GeForce 6800 GS GPU features advanced gaming technologies?including Shader Model 3.0, high-dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and NVIDIA Scalable Link Interface (SLI) multi-GPU technology. The GeForce 6800 GS GPU also has a 256-bit memory interface and a dedicated video processing engine for high-definition video playback.

NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 GS cards feature the NV42 graphics processor (0.11 micron) with 12 pixel pipelines and 5 vertex pipelines with working frequency of 425MHz. The boards also feature 1GHz GDDR3 memory with 256-bit bus providing sufficient performance in memory bandwidth-dependent cases.

NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS-based graphics cards are available for immediate purchase at approximately $249 USD from many of the world?s leading add-in card makers, including: Albatron, Chaintech Computer Co. Ltd., eVGA.com Corporation, Galaxy, Innovision, Leadtek Research Inc., MSI Computer Corporation, Palit Microsystems, Inc., PNY Technologies, Inc., Point of View, Prolink, Sparkle Computer Co. Ltd., and XFX.

XFX has already introduced two overclocked versions of the card codenamed XFX GeForce 6800 GS eXTreme and XXX. The eXTreme line has a core clock speed of 450MHz/1.05GHz, whereas the high-end XXX series runs at 485MHz/1.1GHz, according to the company.