Yesterday, Nvidia launched its new GTX 200 series graphics cards. Despite their hefty prices, they're the fastest graphics processing units on the market right now. Nvidia published a press release on Monday to promote the new hardware, but a lot of it was sales-speak. What do these new GPUs really do to push the envelope forward for gaming, and how do they do it?

Gamasutra had a man on the ground at the unveiling event in Santa Clara, CA, and he reported more detailed information than that which was found in the press release. Read the coverage of the event for developer quotes and plain descriptions of the nature of the new technologies and their potential applications -- gaming and otherwise.

Accoridng to Nvidia marketing VP Tony Tomasi, the GTX 200 series cards run at 93.1% of the hardware's theoretical limits -- much higher than previous generation GPUs. Developers working on everything from Far Cry 2 to Bionic Commando to Folding@home described applications of these new, 240-core beasts for their particular projects.