Tom's Hardware US Editor's Note: This article was written by our colleague Florian Charpentier of Bestofmedia France. Here in the US we are currently working with an 8800GT card from Leadtek Compare Prices on GeForce 8800GT Video Cards. We are seeing similar results to those Florian reports and plan to include the card in future builds, for example, in those for our System Builders Marathon.

Here are some photos of the Leadtek card.

Packaging for Leadtek 8800GT

Head-on view of Leadtek 8800GT

Side view of Leadtek's 8800GT shows how thin the new card is

Ah the wild, wild world of hardware manufacturing! Intel has decided to bump forward its NDA on Penryn's performance to before its launch. Hey! Why not? Nvidia has already managed the same maneuver to be sure to precede the new Radeon HD 3800 release! Hence comes the second major review published today, after months of wandering in the wilderness, waiting for those new products to deem it time to show up, with (of course) the availability of last minute of test samples and drivers. It's not like we were closing on a specific date or even a particular season, one traditionally good for manufacturer's sales or anything like that...

The behavior of the two graphic cards giants is all the more unusual (and reprehensible) after the launch of their new Direct X 10 architectures. Generally, high end cards quickly give way to mid-range cards with more interesting performance-to-price ratios. This time it hasn't worked, in part because of the new cost of transistors the new architectures brings (due to new API support and unified architecture), making the arrival of new (cheap-to-produce) GPUs harder, but efficient using a process that has been mastered couple of months ago. Nvidia was first with its disappointing GeForce 8600 GTS and GT, and yet hardly measured up to by the Radeon HD 2600 that arrived later on. Never since, perhaps, the first GeForce 3 had the gap between high end and mid-range, been so important. This gap pleased manufacturers (especially Nvidia), since gamers logically abandoned those cards in favor of the less out of reach high end models, with the GeForce 8800GTS 320 MB in the spotlight. The card was introduced at the beginning of the year for no less than $300.

Crysis' demo has been avalaible since Saturday

Finally, manufacturers decided it was time to offer genuine mid-range items, reasonably close to the high end ones in terms of performance. They've also gotten great help, from the availability of new processes in foundries (TSMC leading them all).

Is the GeForce 8800GT the ultimate card for financially challenged gamers?

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