Santa Clara (CA) - Nvidia will be launching its next-gen 9-series graphics cards today, February 21. Reviews of the sub-$200 cards are scheduled to surface at 8 am EDT and we will get a better idea why we should care about Nvidia’s new volume enthusiast card.

Graphics enthusiast will have plenty of reading material for breakfast when all major hardware review sites will be dishing out the news and numbers about the GeForce 9600 GT. We just received confirmation from Nvidia partners that they are good to go with their mainstream part, which is designed to make Nvidia’s G92 technology a bit more affordable.

At least for now, the “Nvidia delays this and that” stories should be put to rest. Of course, the high-end GeForce 9800 GX2 remains a different story.

The GeForce 9600GT will continue the debates on Internet forums with questions whether the G9x architecture translates into the GeForce 8 or 9 series - and why Nvidia continues to confuse its customers. In 2008, it seems, the trend is to put two product numbers on one product (and its variations). The G92 is used in 8800GT, GTS 512 MB and 9800GX2 cards, while the G94 is used for the 9600GT.

The G94 is still a DirectX 10.0, which means deferred rendering engines will have issues with MSAA.

Depending on the vendor, 9600 GT cards will be priced between $169 and $189.