8800 Ultra to release

[Kab]

17th April along with the other mid-range GPU's that were known to:
http://www.k-hardware.de/news.php?s=c&news_id=6408

Translation: (no good)
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=de_en&url=http://www.k-hardware.de/news.php?s=c&news_id=6408

[Grov]

Spes on Ultra? GDDR4?

Im thinking 675/2200 GDDR4, 1450 shader clock.

[jonnyGURU]

http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=articles&go=read&arc_id=130

and confirmed.

I spoke with someone I know close w/ nVidia and they said...

"Rumored name “8800 Ultra” this is going to be an extremely allocated card. This is NVIDIA’s counter to the R600... but even better.

I bet NVIDIA is going to wait till the R600 comes out and then a week later this so called card launches from NVIDIA.

Majority of the allocation is going to go to system builders.

There is no reason why NVIDIA should launch anything new… their waiting for ATI to make a move now.

Hopefully ATI did their homework and gets it right this time."

[madmat]

They're shooting themselves in the foot if they don't release into retail channels. All they'll do is alienate their fan base by making the hottest card on the market so hard to procure that hardly anyone will get one.

I'm getting to where I just hate these stupid little shows of one oneupmanship.

[Kab]

Initial benchmarks are not good for the R600 80nm and partners have lost interest and faith. They, most of them believe that the 8800 Ultra has doomed the R600 pre-release.

I second that, and said it a while back for sure. Since G80 release nVidia has been working on this Ultra to only release it as soon as AMD/ATI release the R600.

I know the initial price of the R600 is above the 8800GTX and the 8800Ultra is meant to cost less than its competition.

Just keep in mind news changes, because in marketing decisions can change overnight.

[Skott]

The 8800GTX would be more than enough for many people so if the 8800Ultra pushes the GTX's price down some and makes it more affordable so much the better. :)

[doublejack]

From this it sounds like the 8800 Ultra is mostly going to be a paper release, solely to retain bragging rights. That's rather lame imo. It's essentially just binning gpu's, cherry picking the best and factory overclocking them - combined with faster memory. That's definitely going to beat 8800GTX speeds, but I wouldn't call it another step forward.

[Hutch]

If they are using GDDR4 memory, expect to see R600 crushed at stock speeds and moderate overclocks. The newer GDDR4 memory is able to reach incredibley high speeds, close to 4000mhz.

[Kab]

As far as I know through just online reports and rumors, the first batch of R600 is GDDR3 and clocked pretty low. Its only the later batch that maybe 65nm aswell as GDDR4 and clocked high.

Here's more info on the 8800 Ultra and 8950GX2:

GeForce 8950 GX 2 consists of 2 x G80 GPUs on one card. It has 2 X 96 stream processors, 2 X 320- bit memory system bus , 2 X 640 mb. It wil use GDDR-4, frequency 575/2000 MHz, the frequency of shader domain is 1700 MHz, recommended retail price $649.

GeForce 8800 Ultra comes with 128 stream processors, 384- bit memory system bus. It has 768 mb memory of type GDDR-4, frequency 650/2200 MHz, the frequency of shader domain 1800 MHz, recommended retail price $549.

According to them, the GeForce 8950 GX2 will be on average up to 50% faster than GeForce 8800 GTX but it will require a better PSU than what is spec. for 8800GTX. A water cooled version of the 8950GX2 is in the pipeline.

GeForce 8800 Ultra is an overclocked G80 with frequency pumped up from 1200-1350 MHz to 1700-1800 MHz. It will be 30% faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX, although the core and memory frequencies will also grow from 575/1800 MHz to 650/2200 MHz. These video cards will be costly and will be limited.

Linky (http://my.ocworkbench.com/bbs/showthread.php?%20threadid=61380)

http://www3.b92.net/ipb_images/style_emoticons/default/huh.gif