Partners of Nvidia Corp., the world’s largest supplier of standalone graphics processors, on Monday unveiled graphics cards powered by Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS graphics processing unit (GPU) with reduced memory amount onboard, which allows them to sell the new Microsoft DirectX 10-compatible products at a reduced price that will allow more gamers to get the latest graphics technology.

The new flavour of the GeForce 8800 GTS features 320MB of memory, two times less than on the previously released model, but sports the fully-fledged GeForce 8800 GTS chip with 500MHz clock-speed, 96 stream processors at 1200MHz , 24 texture mapping units and 20 raster operation units and 320-bit memory bus. The new graphics boards will cost starting from $299, about $100 less than the price of the cheapest GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB.

“Our goal is to drive PC gaming to new heights by leading the DirectX 10 revolution, making this exciting next-generation technology and the GeForce 8 Series performance available to an even wider gaming audience. Delivering the 8800 GTS to lower price points is a big first step in that direction,” said Ujesh Desai, general manager of desktop GPUs at Nvidia.

The new GPU from Nvidia comes as ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, is struggling to launch its highly-anticipated Radeon X2800-series products (code-named R600), which also feature DirectX 10 capabilities. As a consequence for AMD, it will have to reduce pricing of its Radeon X1950 XT product to stay competitive.

Nevertheless, releasing a graphics card at $299 price-point will hardly allow Nvidia to claim significant additional market share, as the most popular graphics card cost from $150 to $249, the price-points gap where AMD has pretty comfortable positions offering Radeon X1650 XT and Radeon X1950 Pro graphics cards. Still, as the price on the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB declines, AMD will have to respond with relatively affordable DirectX 10-capable solution, which should be good for the market, as it will catalyze game developers to adopt new application programming interface.

“The more gamers that have DirectX 10 capable hardware in their systems, the more incentive game developers have to add the most advanced visual effects to their games.  When gamers get immersed in Crysis and see the kind of experience DirectX 10 delivers, they will be thankful that NVIDIA led the charge to the next generation of PC games,” said Cevat Yerli, President of Crytek.