XFX GeForce 8800GTX Ultra XXX

Thought the 8800 GTX was ultimate? Then realised the Ultra version was insano? Well here's the ULTRA Ultra.

Capitalising on its high-end domination, NVIDIA has released the 8800 GTX Ultra. It is the result of NVIDIA having a healthy six-month lead in front of AMD to refine yields and push the clocks higher. The consequent card grasped firmly in our semi-evolved metacarpi this month is the XFX GeForce 8800GTX Ultra XXX Edition.

Coming in at 675MHz core and 2300MHz effective memory, XFX’s beast runs 63MHz and 140MHz above a normal Ultra, and in turn 100MHz and 500MHZ faster than a standard GTX. Even the shader clock has been tweaked to 1675MHz, up from the Ultra’s 1500MHz and 1350MHz in the GTX.

A new cooler makes this possibly the sexiest video card this side of EVGA’s enshrouded KO edition cards – and is still quiet. At idle, the card sits at 61°C, while at load it manages to peak 81°C. Worryingly at stock speeds consistent artefacting was present in ATITool’s 3D view, suggesting the clocks may be pushed too hard. While nothing noticeable turned up in our game tests, this is concerning nonetheless.

3DMark06 SM 3.0 scored 4372, 3558 and 3156 at 1280 x 1024, 1600 x 1200 and 1920 x 1200. Using the same respective resolutions the ancient Half-Life 2 managed 226.09, 205.24 and 188.24fps, and Call of Duty 2 yielded 65.831, 63.678 and 59.247fps. A normal GTX by comparison scores 3501, 2853, 2515 in 3DMark06, 193.53, 175.74, 160.81fps in Half-Life 2 and 66.828, 55.52, 50.884 in Call of Duty 2, the last results suggesting our custom benchmark is starting to become CPU bound at lower resolutions.

This is without doubt the most ball-busting card on the market, smacking the competition out of the park. Unfortunately it means it attracts an utterly ludicrous price tag, one more worthy of a 3D workstation GPU than something intended for gaming. At the time of writing a normal Ultra can be had for around $1050, and a vanilla GTX can be found for about $800. The performance cannot be denied, which has saved the score – however the performance doesn’t double, despite being close to twice the price. If you need to go top dog, be sensible and get a normal GTX.