NVIDIA's overclocked GeForce 8800 Ultra debuts

Really, it's hard for us to imagine sticking anything as loud and power hungry as the GeForce 8800 GTX into our precious desktop, no matter how great the latest games look on it, and we're having an even harder time envisioning NVIDIA's new 8800 Ultra anywhere near our motherboard. The new children-eating card starts at $829, and includes premium versions of the GTX's components, overclocked to fairly unreasonable degrees: a 612MHz core clock, 1500MHz shader clock and 1080MHz memory clock. Unfortunately, all that Ultra-ness only leads to a 10-15% performance increase, which isn't horrible, but hardly worth ditching your current 8800 GTX SLI setup for a couple of Ultras. But if that's not enough to dissuade you, or if you've been holding out for the best of the best from NVIDIA, you can pick one of these up around May 15th.

[Byrongman @ May 2nd 2007 12:04PM]

I'm an ATI fanboy so I think I'll just hold out for their wave of DirectX 10 cards.

Plus, wasn't NVIDIA having "issues" on Vista? I'm thinking about a new PC and about the last thing I want is to sink +2k into a machine to find it choking.

[kcombs @ May 2nd 2007 12:44PM]

Byrongman - You must have missed this: http://www.dailytech.com/ATI+Radeon+HD+2900+XTX+Doomed+from+the+Start/article7052.htm

The problem nvidia was having was making drivers available for vista for the 8800 cards. Which has been fixed.

[Standingfast @ May 2nd 2007 12:06PM]

I'll stick with my current 8800GTX thank you. My card is already bottlenecked by my relatively "old" 939 Athlon64 X2 4200+. ^_^

[kduck @ May 2nd 2007 12:12PM]

Can the NVIDIA improve 3D animation like Jean Claude the 3D tiger?
http://www.backgammonmasters.com/jc-barbarossa.html

[Phil Perman @ May 2nd 2007 12:10PM]

I think Anandtech summed this card up very well

"The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra is an utter waste of money"

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2979&p=10

[Jaxim @ May 2nd 2007 12:14PM]

I just checked nVidia's website to see if they issued any new drivers today. The version number is still "158.18", which was released last month, but for some reason the release date has been updated to today's date.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_158.18.html

[KC @ May 2nd 2007 12:18PM]

At this price, it certainly is cheaper to get a gaming console or two for the price of this gaming card.

[1337sauce @ May 2nd 2007 12:24PM]

Why would anybody pay $900 for a GPU?

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

[David @ May 5th 2007 3:54PM]

If you were blind, but lived in a future world where you could buy a new pair of eyes, wouldn't you want the best eyes you could afford? A substantial number of my waking hours are spent staring at my 2560x1600 monitor, and a lot of that time is spent in 3D games. I'd like to have fluid framerates and immersive visuals. I'm unable to upgrade my CPU past the Athlon64 FX-57 that I bought with the computer because my CPU/motherboard uses an older socket type than today's CPUs, but I can replace my pair of GeForce 7800GTX 512s with something that will give me noticeably better performance (and is DirectX 10 compliant). And with my current setup some games just lag. I'd gladly spend $900 on a graphics card if it's the right card. I mean, it's my graphics card afterall. I wouldn't buy a cheap pair of eyes if I was blind. I want to be able to clearly see and interact with the world around me, real or virtual.

[lyl545646 @ May 2nd 2007 12:24PM]

Oh boy, I guess I will just take that prostitution job and earn some cash, fast!

Anyone interested in man-whore? (Preferably, females only)

[Ryan @ May 2nd 2007 12:32PM]

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=402

[Byrongman @ May 2nd 2007 1:38PM]

Good to know, thank you!

[darkstar @ May 2nd 2007 12:48PM]

i dont care what you say.
im getting one!!!


NOT!!!!!!!!!

[MagusDF @ May 2nd 2007 1:15PM]

I would say 2/3 od the buyers for this card will probably only own it because it was stuffed into an overpriced gamming rig.

[Tony @ May 2nd 2007 1:32PM]

out of topic, but you think that lady's eye is real or a cgi?

[Gaspode @ May 2nd 2007 2:23PM]

No, she is clearly a computer rendering.
Probably Adrianne, a follow up to NVIDIAs Dawn:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_%28demo%29

[wyrdtoo @ May 2nd 2007 1:38PM]

For $250 less you can get virtually identical specs in the eVGA 8800 GTX Superclocked card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130079

[murray @ May 2nd 2007 2:09PM]

LodeRunner is gonna fly on this thing.

[Zeus the God @ May 2nd 2007 4:44PM]

God, I wish I had the money to buy one of these or the GTX and a new mother board. My 6600 isn't doin' it for me anymore, at least, it never did (bought it a few months back, as I have a budget PC).

I wanna' see some benchmarks on this against the HD 2900XTX. I've never really liked ATI, but with the 360's GPU, I'm definitely interested.

[Juaquin @ May 2nd 2007 7:31PM]

I can easily get my 8800GTS up those speeds (of course, it has less memory). An 8800GTX should have no problem at all being clocked to those speeds. So basically you're paying a couple hundred bucks to avoid downloading ATITool or your favorite overclocking utility and turning the speed up yourself. Better off spending the money on some aftermarket cooling.

[Josh @ May 2nd 2007 8:11PM]

...and the deserts begin to expand further due to the massive amount of power gamers will be needing in the near future to play crysis.

I want on

~Josh