Nvidia Corp. is getting ready for holiday shopping. The graphics giant has shipped a new graphics processing unit called the GeForce 6800 GS, slotted between the standard GeForce 6800 and faster GeForce 6800 GT to target graphics cards priced at around $250 -- a higher-volume niche than the performance-crazed gamer audience of Nvidia's flagship GeForce 7 Series. Compatible with Microsoft's DirectX Shader Model 3.0 and Nvidia's dual-card SLI technology, the 6800 GS features 12 pixel pipelines and five vertex engines, with a 256-bit memory interface to GDDR-3 memory.

Nvidia says manufacturers including eVGA, Leadtek, MSI, and Chaintech are now shipping cards based on the new chip. So is PNY Technologies, whose Verto GeForce 6800 GS is overclocked right out of the box: The PCI Express x16 card features a 470MHz clock and 1.1GHz memory data rate, versus the standard 425MHz and 1.0GHz respectively. Equipped with DVI, VGA, and HDTV/S-Video outputs, the Verto board has a suggested retail of $279.