GeForce x8500 GT, GeForce 8600 GT and GeForce 8600 GTS will launch on April 17, with the GeForce 8300 GS and GeForce 8400 GS following soon after. The release of these boards will serve as the real road-test for the G80 design as these boards are expected to be the ones that will carry the majority of nVidia's sales in the near future.
Thanks to the flexibility offered by the G84 and G86 chips and the 80nm process most of nVidia's partners will offer versions clocked well above the reference speeds quoted by the manufacturer.
GeForce 8600 GTS will feature 256 MB GDDR3, 675 MHz core clock and a 1000 MHz memory clock. The card will also feature 32 Scalar Shader units clocked at 1.45GHz each. nVidia claims average power consumption should not exceed 70 Watts although the card can safely reach 125 to 150W. The 8600GTS will be priced between $199 and $229.
GeForce 8600 GT will feature 256 MB GDDR3, 540 MHz core clock (expected to vary from 500 to 600 MHz) and a 700 MHz memory clock. Tis card will also feature 32 Scalar Shader units but now they each work at 1.18GHz. The 8600GT will be priced between $149 and $159.
GeForce 8500 GS will be the low end offering in the G80 series with 128 to 256 MB of DDR2 or GDDR3 memory, 450 MHz core clock and a 700 MHz memory clock. The card features 16 Scalar Shaders clocked at 900 MHz and will be priced around $89 to $129. This low end board, at first glance, seems to be a risk for nVidia as we are not sure it offers quite enough to a gamer to justify its presence in the G80 product range. We need however, to see how the card will perform, in real-world tests before we can reach any conclusion on its appeal.
The GeForce 8400 GS and 8300 GS will only show up in OEM systems and will have 450 MHz core clocks and 400 MHz memory clocks.
