Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra is the latest card based on the ground-breaking NVIDIA G80 GPU. Like its predecessor, the GeForce 8800 GTX and all G80-based graphics cards, it features a massively-parallel unified architecture, as well as support for DirectX 10.

If you have not already read about the technology behind the GeForce 8800 GTX, and its brother the GeForce 8800 GTS, do take a look at our GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS Tech Report. It will give you a good grounding on the new NVIDIA unified architecture and the G80 GPU, which is the basis of the new GeForce 8600 GTS graphics card.

Now, let's take a look at how the GeForce 8800 Ultra compares against its predecessors. Here's a comparison table of NVIDIA's top-of-the-line GPUs of the past and present and the GeForce 8800 Ultra.

The new GeForce 8800 Ultra has 6.5% more texture fill rate and 17.2% more memory bandwidth than the GeForce 8800 GTX. Of course, the GeForce 8800 GTX costs about 3X more than a GeForce 8600 GTS. As you can see, both cards are virtually similar in hardware. The GeForce 8800 Ultra's performance advantage is entirely due to its higher core and memory clock speeds.

New Silicon

While the GeForce 8800 Ultra is based on the same G80 GPU as the GeForce 8800 GTX, it uses a revised G80 silicon. The new silicon, and the 90nm process used to create it, had been tweaked by NVIDIA and TSMC to improve timings and clock speeds.

In other words, this is the same GPU, only tweaked to run at faster clock speeds and lower timings. This revised silicon also has a slightly smaller thermal output. Although NVIDIA was not forthcoming about the thermal dissipation of this new GPU, they did say that the new GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card will consume slightly less power (2W or 1.13%) than the GeForce 8800 GTX.

NVIDIA also did not say if the same improved GPU will be used in current GeForce 8800 GTX, it stands to reason that NVIDIA would switch the GeForce 8800 GTX to this improved GPU, instead of maintaining the older silicon. If so, new GeForce 8800 GTX cards will have real overclocking potential.

New Heights

In the past, when NVIDIA release a new top-of-the-line card, they would have it replace the previous top-of-the-line card as far as price was concerned. Then the other cards would drop down a spot in the price range.

However, this time, NVIDIA has decided that the GeForce 8800 Ultra deserves a new price range. Instead of replacing the GeForce 8800 GTX in the $599+ price range, NVIDIA has created graphics card history by pricing the new GeForce 8800 Ultra at a nose-bleeding price range of $829+.

Yes, that was not a typo. NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards will be priced at $829 and above. That makes the GeForce 8800 Ultra about $230 more expensive than the GeForce 8800 GTX!

Is the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra really worth that kind of money? Well, let's examine it and find out today.