Nvidia Corp.’s partners were rumoured to unveil graphics cards for previous-generation accelerated graphics port 8x (AGP 8x) bus based on the company’s latest GeForce 7900-series graphics chips that bring higher performance amid lower thermals compared to the GeForce 7800-series offerings. However, it looks like at least one add-in-card maker uses the code-named G71 chips for its GeForce 7800 GS boards.

Leadtek, one of the leading add-in-card makers in Nvidia’s camp, has started to sell its GeForce 7800 GS graphics card, which is based on a 90nm chip from the company, according to pictures published by Akiba PC Hotline web-site. General specifications of the G71 model 7800 GS resemble that of the original product, but due to 90nm process technology, the new one should be much less power hungry.

Nvidia’s GeForce 7800 GS graphics card was originally based on the well-known 110nm G70 processor that powered all the latest GeForce 7800-series graphics cards starting from the GeForce 7800 GT and ending with the top-of-the-range GeForce 7800 GTX 512. The chip flavour that powered the GeForce 7800 GS has a cut-down specification compared to the parts unveiled before it: it has 16 pixel processors, 6 vertex processors and 375MHz clock-speed as compared to 20 pixel processors, 7 vertex processor and 400MHz clock-speed of the GeForce 7800 GT. Nevertheless, the 7800 GS graphics cards are equipped with 1200MHz memory, up from 1000MHz on the 7800 GT product.

Since both G70 and G71 sport native PCI Express x16 bus, in order to plug them into AGP systems graphics cards makers have to utilize a special AGP<=>PCI Express x16 chip from Nvidia.

According to earlier media reports, some of Nvidia’s add-in-card partners might be considering release of GeForce 7600 GT and even 7900 GT -based graphics cards for outdated systems.

Nvidia Corp. did not immediately responded to email seeking for comments.