Just as the pain of shelling out $500 for a 6800 Ultra or X850XT begins to wear off, both ATI and NVIDIA have announced that they have 512MB cards up and running. Although NVIDIA did not explicitly come out and confirm this, Gainward was kind enough to take the liberty of gabbing to The Inquirer.  ;D

ATI

CHIP FIRM ATI confirmed it will be giving people going to the Texas Gaming Festival to look at what it claims is the world’s first 512MB…Heye said that ATI is giving attendees the chance to check out the first 512MB gaming cards before they’re sent to its software partners for developing future game technologies.

NVIDIA

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.