NVIDIA has officially announced its G80 GeForce 8800 series graphics processors. The new G80 GeForce 8800 series graphics processors introduce new features such as unified shaders, NVIDIA's GigaThread technology, Quantum Effects physics processing, 128-bit floating point HDR lighting, 16x anti-aliasing and full support for Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 10 with shader model 4.0 support.

This time around two models will initially be available-the GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS. The GeForce 8800 GTX is NVIDIA's flagship 8800-series graphics processor for this generation. It will have 128 unified shaders that NVIDIA refers to as stream processors. The 128 stream processors will be clocked at 1350 MHz while the rest of the GPU has a 575 MHz GPU clock. Backing the 128 stream processors is 768MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 900 MHz for an effective 1.8 GHz on a 384-bit memory bus. All GeForce 8800 GTX-based graphics cards will be equipped with a dual-slot cooler. GeForce 8800 GTX cards will be quite long too, with a 10.5" PCB length.

Slotted below the GeForce 8800 GTX is the GeForce 8800 GTS. The GeForce 8800 GTS is slightly cut down and only features 96 stream processors clocked at 1200 MHz. Video memory is also decreased to 640MB as well. Nevertheless, the memory is clocked at 800 MHz for an effective 1.6 GHz on a 320-bit interface. GeForce 8800 GTS based graphics cards will also have a lower 500 MHz core clock as well. While GeForce 8800 GTS based cards will feature a similar dual-slot cooler as the GeForce 8800 GTX, the PCB length is shortened to 9 inches.