VR-Zone reports that NVIDIA will release cheaper GeForce 8800 cards next month to increase pressure on current ATi X1950 lineup targeting at X1950XT 256MB mainly. The new cards will based on the same 8800GTS GPU (96 unified, 24 texture processors and 20 ROPs). It has the same core and memory clock speeds but half the memory size of the current 8800GTS cards. The card will still be known as GeForce 8800GTS but comes with 320MB GDDR3 memories in 10 x 8M*32 array so the memory bus width remains unchanged at 320bit. The card length is the same as the current 8800GTS card at 9 inches and it is still a dual slot. The performance is close to the current 8800GTS 640M but it is US$100 cheaper. Does a price tag of US$299 sounds good to you? :-D

In related news, they also report that February 28th is the day where R600 card samples will be available to manufacturers and press while AMD continues working hard to launch R600 @ CeBIT. There are two versions; a 12" for OEMs and a 9" for the end users. No info as yet on their differences.