Gainward announces 6800 Ultra 512MB card

GAINWARD HAS JUST confirmed that it is working on 512 MB version of 6800 Ultra card. Its design is underway and the company expects to show this card at SnoBit, a German show that starts on 10th of March.

The card will have 256MB on each side of the PCB, doubling total memory to a magnificent 512MB. It's a cool number and it might give some performance in 1600x1200 at 4X FSAA or more and Aniso 8X or more. It should be available after this German show, we expect it by the end of March or early April.

Imagine two of those cards in SLI. You will get 1024MB or 1GB of graphic memory but this won't come for free. Gainward expects that those cards will end up €200 to €300 more expensive. Knowing current price ranges, this will result with at least a €700+ price range for a single card. If you put those two in SLI this will cost you €1500 - just for two cards. Ouch! That hurts your wallet big time.

The cards will be available in many variations. You will be able to buy air-cooled and of course water-cooled cards and as you now water-cooled version will cost you some extra bucks.

This graphic war is just getting crazier all the time. We ended up at graphic subsystem that costs €1500. Isn't that a little bit too much for a graphic card unless you are a top model or an actor? We know that Robin Williams actually likes to play games but he prefers ATI cards to Nvidia.

We expected such a card in Q4 but it resurfaced in Q2 2005 it seems, and ATI don't plan to stay at 256MB versions, as we revealed earlier this week. µ