NVIDIA was nice enough not to tell us about the launch of the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB on the 12th, but the card has a lot of interesting details. No wait, it doesn't, but at least we don't have to sit through another hour of marketing speak to know nothing more. Here are the important bits, mark this well, until February 12th, all GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB information is under embargo and should not be shared or discussed with anyone. This means you, so for our sake, don't tell anyone about it or cross post it, it is tip top secret. And just so you know, NVIDIA has a habit of changing dates in a huff when they leak, so this may move a bit. You never know, it might just happen. - The Inquirer

NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB details emerge

With another note along the line, due to our Windows Vista driver not being finalized to work effectively with the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB, please test with Windows XP until we can get you an updated Vista driver. I am not sure what it means by finalized to work effectively, even trying to parse it doesn't make much sense, but NVIDIA is serious, and repeats the warning five times in its presentation. The card itself is exactly the same as a GTS 640MB with half the memory. It has the same specifications, it's a 90 nanometre chip clocked at 500/1600MHz and 1200MHz shader speed with a 320-bit memory interface.

It has 20 ROP's and will do the same theoretical texture fill rate. It also remains a two slot solution. For pricing, it is aiming at the $299-329 range versus $399-440 for the 640MB flavor and $599-649 for the GTX. Not hugely bad, but I would spring for the extra 320MB personally. Interestingly in its benchmark notes, it strongly cautions against AMD CPU's, and recommends that you only use Intel XE level CPU's. More interesting, it recommends two sticks of Corsair memory, good stuff but interesting that it names a company. More interesting is that neither of the choices are NVIDIA certified.

Its list of approved power supplies is also curious, it left out many partners, OCZ and Corsair are not on the list. Under the testing parts, there are several more interesting details. First it recommends the ForceWare 97.92 drivers over the newer ones. It then goes on to show the card slapping an ATI Radeon X1950 around. It doesn't show it in comparison to the GTS 640MB or the GTX though. Overall, it looks like a really boring card, meant to satisfy a price point. Until it can make working Vista drivers and stop promising phantom features, it will be hard for me personally to recommend anything it makes.