The new wave of GeForce cards have all been impressive, but not everyone is looking for a top dog when it comes to building a PC. Some just want to be able to upgrade to a newer OS (such as Vista) without buying a new PC. While Intel currently has the dominant share of the entry-level GPU market (particularly due to their level of integration), Nvidia is wanting to get a piece of that and offer a hardware card at a low price. Today, they are introducing the GeForce 7200 GS, an entry-level card wth all the features you'd expect from a 7000 series unit. It'll be very low in price, coming it at around only $50. It'll be even less powerful than the 7300 GS, another of their entry level units, with only two pipelines. All in all, they are claiming the card will be roughly a 50% boost above an integrated solution like Intel GMA. Nothing to write home about, but it might be just the ticket to let an older machine upgrade to Vista without sinking a lot of money into the card (since you'd be sinking all the money into a license for Vista). Curiously, it'll be up to other OEMs to decide how much RAM to put into it:
Add-in board manufacturers are free to equip GeForce 7200 GS graphics cards with 128MB or 256MB of DDR2 memory. NVIDIA recommends 800 MHz for GeForce 7200 GS graphics cards. The DDR2-800 memory attaches to the GPU via a 64-bit memory interface. NVIDIA clocks the GeForce 7200 GS GPU at 450 MHz.
Nvidia will be making it available to all their outlets soon.