NVIDIA has basically rested on its laurels with the 8xxx series of cards. The 8800 Ultra is still the highest performing graphics chip on the market today, with performance that rivals two of the competition's 3870s (HD3870). This is interesting in that the 8800 Ultra was released over a year ago. The 8800 Ultra is in fact an overclocked 8800 GTX card which was released nearly two years ago. It is a testament to the architecture that performance on the high-end of the video card market has not exceeded the 8800 GTX.

The release of the 8800GT, based upon their G92 video chip brought new levels of performance to the mainstream (~$250) market. The 8800GT became so popular that it was sold out for much of the latter part of 2007 after its launch. Today, the 8800GT is still one of the better buys for video cards. The 8600GT was the mid-range counterpart for the 8800GTX but wasn't as successful as the card did not have the performance of the 8800 series and wasn't that much cheaper. NVIDIA is one of the best at gauging the market for their new cards and pricing it accordingly. Today NVIDIA is launching their newest member of their stable, the 9600GT to replace the 8600GT in their mid-range price offering. As the 9600GT is set to replace the 8600GT, it should be an interesting comparison.