Yesterday NVidia officially announced their first of the 9-series video cards, the 9600GT. It may sound big and badass from the number and the GT at the end, but in fact this is not a high end model. 

In a surprising move, the 9600GT is actually a mid-range GPU, meant for gamers who don't want to pay big bucks for their video processor, but still want the benefits of playing some games at high resolutions and without constant slowdown.

It doesn't beat the 8800GTS even (the 320Mb version, that is), meaning it isn't superbly strong, but at just $200 it is a great card for the price. Though the rest of us with better cards than that already can't wait for some serious mind-melting GPU's, which this should help fund soon enough.

[via press release]