(Review) - With the 6800s dwindling away in the market, there was a huge gap in NVIDIA’s product portfolio, which catered to the enthusiasts. ATI, however, had the X1600XT catering to the very market that NVIDIA was nowhere close to; therefore, NVIDIA could not leave the hole unplugged for long.

On November 7th, NVIDIA introduced a new card to combat ATI’s X1600XT, the 6800GS. This particular card will retail for $249 MSRP, which, according to NVIDIA, performs as much as 40 percent higher than the standard 6800 vanilla, yet costs the same.

It features 256MB/256-bit DDR3 RAM, along with DVI, VGA and HDTV out connectors. The 6800GS is obviously SLI ready and supports PureVideo. Following the same launch patterns as its 7800 series of GPUs, the 6800GS was available immediately after the launch.

The name signifies that the card is based on the older NV42 core and not the G70 (7800GT/GTX). Since it’s based on the 110nm process instead of the 130nm (NV40), the chip runs cooler and can have higher clock speeds. Therefore, it’s no surprise that at 425MHz, it’s clocked higher than the 6800 Ultra that’s clocked at 400MHz.

Speaking of the 6800 Ultra, note that apart from the 6800GS, the entire range of 6800 cards has been discontinued.

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