Giant among graphics chip makers: Nvidia, unveils its new GeForce GTX 200 series. There are two flavors in this series:

1. GeForce GTX 280
2. GeForce GTX 260

The official Web explains features as:

2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture: Second generation architecture delivers up to 50% more gaming performance over the first generation through 240 enhanced processing cores that provide incredible shading horsepower.

NVIDIA PhysX^TM-Ready: GeForce GPU support for NVIDIA PhysX technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce.

3-way NVIDIA SLI® Technology: Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing 3-way AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) for the world’s fastest gaming solution under Windows Vista with solid, state-of-the-art drivers.

NVIDIA CUDA^TM Technology: CUDA technology unlocks the power of the GPU’s processing cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks - such as video encoding - delivering up to 7x performance over traditional CPUs.

NVIDIA PureVideo® HD Technology: The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.

NVIDIA HybridPower^TM Technology: Lets you switch from the GeForce GTX 280 graphics card to the motherboard GeForce GPU when running non graphically-intensive applications for a quiet, low power PC experience.

Company claims that this GeForce GTX 200 series provides 150% of the GeForce 8800 Ultra GPU performance.

First one having 240 Processors and 1GB of frame buffer memory is priced $649 starting from June 17, 2008. Geforce GTX 260 will cost $399 available later this month.