Well thought out timing today, on NVIDIA's part of course, has seen the release of the GeForce 8800 Ultra Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).

Touted as being, on average, 10 to 15% faster than NVIDIA's 8800GTX GPU within the test environment utilised, across a range of applications, including 3DMark06, Battlefield 2, Doom 3 and Quake 4, graphics cards implementing the newest GPU from NVIDIA, are expected to be available by 15th May.

Boasting support for high definition video playback with support for Blu-ray and HD DVD content, together with full DirectX 10 unified shader instruction set support, NVIDIA state that the GeForce 8800 Ultra enables the world's fastest gaming platform and declares that its nForce 680i chipset, teamed up with an Intel CPU, provides the fastest and most feature rich platform for the GeForce 8800 Ultra.

Launch partners of GeForce 8800 Ultra GPU powered solutions include ASUS, BFG, Innovision, Leadtek, MSI and XFX, with a price point of 699 Euros, including tax, being suggested.

As the graphics wars hot up, it will inevitably be time for AMD to throw its hat into the ring on this one......

Read the press release in full here.