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Our latest compo with SCAN and NVIDIA is three dimensions of AWESOME.

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What's new

What's new?

We took a detailed look at the GeForce 8800 GTX's architecture here, and I'd urge you to refresh your memory if G80's basic setup has become a blur.

Spilling the expected beans, NVIDIA's invested so much money into architecting GeForce 8800 that adding much else than clock bumps will prove to be too expensive, so let's trot out the spec. table to do the talking.

Graphics Cards	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra 768	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320	AMD Radeon X1950 XTX 512
GPU clock	612MHz	575MHz	500MHz	500MHz	648MHz
Shader clock	1500MHz	1350MHz	1200MHz	1200MHz	648MHz
Memory clock (effective)	2160MHz	1800MHz	1600MHz	1600MHz	2000MHz
Memory interface, size, and implementation	384-bit, 768MiB, GDDR3		320-bit, 640MiB/320MiB, GDDR3		256-bit, 512MiB, GDDR4
Memory Bandwidth	103.68GB/sec	86.40GB/sec	64.00GB/sec
Manufacturing process	TSMC, 90nm (90HS)
Transistor Count	681M				384M
DirectX Shader Model	4.0				3.0
Vertex Shading	128 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD+MUL dual-issue (Unified)				8 vec4 + scalar ALUs, MADD co-issue
Fragment Shading	128 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD+MUL dual-issue (Unified)				48 vec3 + scalar ALUs, MADD+ADD dual-issue
Geometry Shading	128 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD+MUL dual-issue (Unified)				N/A
Data Sampling and Filtering	32ppc address and 64ppc bilinear INT8 filtering, max 16xAF				16ppc address and 16ppc bilinear INT8 filtering, max 16xAF
ROPs	24, 8Z or 8C samples/clk, 2clk FP16 blend 8xMSAA, 16xCSAA		20, 8Z or 8C samples/clk, 2clk FP16 blend 8xMSAA, 16xCSAA		16, 2Z or 1C samples/clk, 2clk FP16 blend 6xMSAA

Put simply, the GeForce 8800 Ultra is a faster-clocked version of GeForce 8800 GTX. NVIDIA's bumped up the core speed by just over 6 per cent, shader clocks by around 11 per cent and memory bandwidth by 20 per cent. Each of these increases will become telling when playing games at ultra-high resolutions and with added image quality. We'd expect the Ultra to be around 10 per cent faster than the GTX in most card-limited scenarios. It also means that the Ultra packs in 576GFLOPS of compute performance at default shader speeds!

The Ultra's speed increase is reasonable if not pant-wettingly exciting, especially the core's meagre increase. NVIDIA's G80 yields have improved over the last 6 months and we've seen AIBs ship a slew of overclocked, air-cooled GTXs that run with near-Ultra speeds and, in cases, watercooling. NVIDIA's documentation asserts that the Ultra utilises a 'new silicon revision and advanced process enhancements', meaning a general clean-up of the 90nm design by removing some of the slower paths and improving general timings: tweaks, if you will.

It's patently obvious that the GeForce 8800 Ultra will usurp the GTX and become the fastest graphics card around, and we'll have to wait a short while for AMD's riposte before declaring it the performance champion of H1 2007.

Pricing

NVIDIA understands that the well-heeled enthusiast will hanker for the fastest GPU around, almost irrespective of price; even if that entails a small performance upgrade from the incumbent GeForce 8800 GTX.

Graphics Cards	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MiB	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MiB	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320	AMD Radeon X1950 XTX 512
RRP pricing as at 02/05/07	$829+/£499	$599+/£350+	$399+/£250+	$299+/£175+	$379/£225

NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 Ultra pricing reflects the fact that it believes its SKU will be faster than anything produced by AMD. That why it's happy to charge such a premium for a SKU that should have no single-card performance peer. We reckon the $829 U.S. Dollar pricing will be reflected by a U.K. retail price of around £499. Expensive, yes, but that's the price you for ultimate performance which has a natural upgrade path (SLI - £1000).

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