NVIDIA has launched its Geforce GTX 200 series GPUs which offer significant improvement in performance and features over the Geforce 9 series. The problem is that most of the important improvements, such as the ability to perform GPU-based computing and physics processing, need special application support which is not available just yet.

In terms of performance, the card is apparently beat by the two-in-one 9800GX2 card, but some tests show the GTX 280 has slightly better performance. There are 240 processing cores in the top-of-the-line GTX 280 card. The graphics clock ticks at 602Mhz while the processor clock runs at 1296MHz. The card features a 512-bit memory interface with a bandwidth of 142 GB/sec. Standard configuration includes 1GB of GDDR3 memory. The price tag is premium: $650.

The new graphics cards will also be featured inside Alienware's Area-51 desktops, including a three-way SLI configuration that Alienware dubs "the world's most advanced, most powerful graphics solution."

Meanwhile, AMD raved about its Cinema 2.0 technology which the company claims is a big step towards photorealism in games. However, their presentation was botched by a demo which featured AMD demonstration model Ruby. The problem was that the model looked the same old not-lifelike creepy way, overimposed on a lifelike scenario.

They did unveil something important, as they announced the ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card will be the world's first to break the 1 teraflop barrier. The chips will go for around $200.