PNY will be first to offer Nvidia's GeForce 8600, having thrown out a press release saying so before Nvidia even made the platform official.
This will be the cheaper cousin to the current cream-of-crop GeForce 8800 series, currently the only DirectX 10-capable board on offer. With ATI's DX10 answer, the Radeon HD whatever, yet to even hit stores, it looks like NVidia's getting a secure lock on the early cycle.
PNY's 8600 GTS will come with 256MB of GDDR3 RAM, and cost under $200. Pictured is a reference board from OCWorkbench.com's benchmarks, via Gizmodo.
For the record, this thing is good, but can't surmount the GeForce 7900 and ATI's X1950, with current titles rough when the settings and resolution are dialed up. On the other hand, it runs cools and gives you cheap access to DX10 effects, so if you're happy running games at 768x and don't want to spend $300 on a damned video card, do it. That said, the alphanumeric model numbering systems the makers use have pretty much become useless, especially when comparing between "generations." Buy by price.
PNY Lets Slip 8600 GTS [Reg]
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