NVIDIA's 8800 Ultra Provides Performance at a Price

Mighty Mouse writes "Hardware review sites across the web have published reviews on NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 Ultra. The response appears to be fairly lukewarm at the moment, mainly thanks to its incredibly high asking price. Bit-tech tested the 8800 Ultra in eight different games at three resolutions, finding it to be on average about 10% faster. TechReport's Scott Wasson reviewed the card using another good selection of games, while HotHardware had the chance to check out SLI performance."

Comments

My Wallet hurts reading this one...

[Kid Zero]

10% faster for $200 (+/-)? How's this a deal? For that price it'd better do dishes, too.

Faster? Yes. Performance for pricepoint? No.

[hsa]

Read this review.

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

And conclusion
"But not this time: The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra is an utter waste of money. "

Don't pay $180 extra for something that gives only few percents extra.

Pointless card

[eebra82]

We all know why NVIDIA would release such a card - considering how soon the R600 is released. Still, giving this card too much attention is pointless. It will exist in very limited quantities and even if you can afford one, you are highly unlikely to find one.

So basically, we are looking at a card only a few hundred will buy.

Considering existing 8800GTXs are faster

[Shivetya]

whats the point?

XFX and others have factory over clocked cards with better speeds than the ultra, though the ultra does feature better memory that should allow overclocked ultras to be quicker than overclocked gtxs.

One thing I did find interesting, most sites say that Nvidia is only competing against itself as the R600 is supposedly very disappointing. In other words, its no threat to the 88 series

It is a complete RIP OFF!!!

[Fallen Kell]

The reviews that were posted here on /. while good normally didn't do their homework today with this new card. Only Anandtech seemed to take a look at what is currently available in terms of factory overclocked 8800GTX's on the market. They used the EVGA 8800GTX KO w/AC3, which benches within less then 1% of the performance of the 8800 Ultra AND costs $180 LESS!

Read the review yourself....

Re:It is a complete RIP OFF!!!

[MBGMorden]

Indeed. When I was in my teenage years, I overclocked the crap out of anything I could get my hands on. I wanted the max speed I could get out of something, and often times given my limited income (my high school job was part-time and netted me maybe $50/week), I often NEEDED to squeeze extra performance out of everything to avoid replacing it or, if it was a new purchase, to get acceptable performance for what little cash I had on hand.

And honestly, I didn't normally have an unstable system back then, it's just that I'd have to sit around doing torture tests, getting the super-duper heatsink paste, researching which chip batch to buy from to get best results, etc.

Somewhere along the line though, I stopped caring so much. I'm almost 26. I have a good job. Yeah I still play PC games, program, and do geeky things, but for the most part - I just buy a reasonably priced component that's "good enough" and don't tinker with it (for example: I'm currently running a Sempron 3400 and a Geforce 7300GT - neither costed too much, and both work just fine for what I need). When it gets too slow I'll buy another "budget" part that will last me another 2 years or so. Yeah I'm spending probably the same money as back then and my systems are comparatively not as fast compared to what's available, but the lack of stress is wonderful.