8800 Ultra to Spoil R600 Launch?!

[Trademark]

I found these leaked specs from DELL, not sure if these are true, but they seem realistic enough for an Ultra Card:
http://www.hardspell.com/english/doc/showcont.asp?news_id=423

Summary:
Core: 650MHz
Memory: 2160Mhz, GDDR3
Shader: ????MHz
Bus: 384Bit
Stream processors: 128
Cooler: Different than the original Geforce 8800GTX

Hope this was useful ;)

[grey_1]

Has anyone even seen any reliable R600 benchies yet?

[Trademark]

To be honest, no.

It's not truly released yet, until then I don't think there will be any reliable benchmarks. But I believe we're talking about 10 to 15% faster than a stock 8800GTX

[Trademark]

Confirmation from tweakers.net:

http://tweakers.net/nieuws/47218/Dell-laat-specs-GeForce-8800-Ultra-uitlekken.html

It's Dutch, but that site is reliable enough.

Shaderclock however remains a mistery, but the rumor says it will be 1.8GHz (UNCONFIRMED)

More confirmation (With screenshot):
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=623&Itemid=1

[coldpower27]

We'll see but at $999 it's a bit steep.

[Redeemed]

We'll see but at $999 it's a bit steep.

Yeah, asking a grand for merely an overclocked 8800GTX that has a better cooler seems lame. I doubt many will buy this card.

[theteamaqua]

yay price drop plz ..

[jcrox]

If the R600 XT really comes out @ $400 I highly doubt a $1000 card will spoil it's debut...you could get 2 R600 XTs and have an extra $200 left over. Besides...even for the fan boys...someone would have to prove that the 8800 Ultra could handle some game that 2 x 640 meg 8800 GTSs couldn't, you'd be saving money that route also.

[TiKiMaN1]

New info on the 8800 Ultra scheduled for retail May 15th:

http://www.theinq.com/default.aspx?article=39150
NVIDIA IS BUSY preparing its answer for spoiling AMD's homecoming, and we managed to learn that Nvidia worked hard on improving the clock performance and power consumption on the new revision of G80 chips, which are going to be used for the spring refresh part.
The GeForce 8800 Ultra comes with 768MB of GDDR-3 memory clocked at very aggressive 1.175 GHz in DDR mode, or 2.35 GHz. The bandwidth has now grown to surpass any upcoming competition, regardless of the width of the memory bus itself. Nvidia will have around 112GB/s on their disposal, tucking in nicely with GPU clocked at 675 MHz, which is the default clock of 8600 GTS as well.

Our sources have informed us that the clock of 128 scalar units inside the GPU didn't change in a dramatical manner, so we can expect shader clock to be from 1.35 to 1.55 GHz. Anything more would be a surprise at this point in time (manufacturing process, that is). Card comes with a new cooler, just like in the old days of 7800GTX and 7800GTX512.

Nvidia is now preparing a press event, so your usual suspects will be going to the airports again, getting the NDA briefings and releasing a review of the cards around May 1st, with products in stores on May 15th.

Only problem was that controlling information that is floating around usually backfires, so forcing people to log on to http://paranoid.nvidia.com when opening PDF's with roadmaps, logging of the IPs etc. etc... really isn't doing the trick, since Nvidia still manufactures products in China. $999 is a tag for limited edition of products, while real future volumes of this product remain uncertain.

Guys, if you really want to control the information, ditch partners and move production to North America.

:eek: $999! If this is true that would be a pretty nice :nutkick:! These must be hard to manufacture.

[Redeemed]

New info on the 8800 Ultra scheduled for retail May 15th:

http://www.theinq.com/default.aspx?article=39150


:eek: $999! If this is true that would be a pretty nice :nutkick:! These must be hard to manufacture.

At $1k a pop, I don't see how it will sufficiently compete against the HD2900 XTX, assuming the XTX will be available in a large quantity.

If ATI's answer to the 640MB GTS performs as close to the GTX as it does, I see no reason why the XTX won't surpass the GTX in performance and match the Ultra's performance- all for less (supposedly).

These are very interesting times, that is for sure. :D

[TiKiMaN1]

At $1k a pop, I don't see how it will sufficiently compete against the HD2900 XTX, assuming the XTX will be available in a large quantity.

If ATI's answer to the 640MB GTS performs as close to the GTX as it does, I see no reason why the XTX won't surpass the GTX in performance and match the Ultra's performance- all for less (supposedly).

These are very interesting times, that is for sure. :D

I just hope there is some loyalty to NVIDIA. Because it seems many on this forum are preparing to jump ship. It's not bad completely I mean look what happened when Core 2 Duo came out. I just have to believe that NVIDIA will have a fantatsic product to match or beat ATI. Here's hoping.

[Xion X2]

Not trying to start a flamewar here, but why should there be any "loyalty" toward one company or the other aside from what the customer receives in performance? For the life of the G80 drivers have been incredibly scarce. Hardware support has been downright abysmal for XP users like myself until just recently. It's only natural to expect many to look elsewhere when something like that happens.

I've owned several different graphics cards and can't ever recall a time when I went 4 months between driver releases. Nor can I ever recall a time that I went through 3 bad graphics cards in one series or 3 different motherboard chipsets.

ATI looks to be putting out an inferior product, but I'm afraid that Nvidia has pissed a lot of people off recently with their mediocre quality control and poor support of hardware and that a lot are going to jump ship no matter what based on that. Personally, I can't really blame them. The thought has crossed my mind.

[Redeemed]

Not trying to start a flamewar here, but why should there be any "loyalty" toward one company or the other aside from what the customer receives in performance? For the life of the G80 drivers have been incredibly scarce. Hardware support has been downright abysmal for XP users like myself until just recently. It's only natural to expect many to look elsewhere when something like that happens.

I've owned several different graphics cards and can't ever recall a time when I went 4 months between driver releases. Nor can I ever recall a time that I went through 3 bad graphics cards in one series or 3 different motherboard chipsets.

ATI looks to be putting out an inferior product, but I'm afraid that Nvidia has pissed a lot of people off recently with their mediocre quality control and poor support of hardware and that a lot are going to jump ship no matter what based on that. Personally, I can't really blame them. The thought has crossed my mind.

Agree 100%, except for the part about ATI's R600 series being inferior. So far, the XT (which is targeted to compete with the 640MB GTS) performs more closely to the GTX. There is no reason to believe that the XTX will perform worse than the GTX. As to the Ultra, it is going for $1000 a pop- at that price I doubt ATi really needs to have a card to compete with the Ultra.

Oh well. We'll see next month how this all plays out.

[J-Mag]

Not trying to start a flamewar here, but why should there be any "loyalty" toward one company or the other aside from what the customer receives in performance?

Well if ATI was still Canadian then nationalism could be factored into loyalty. Now that they are both American it is irrelevant.

[TiKiMaN1]

Well if ATI was still Canadian then nationalism could be factored into loyalty. Now that they are both American it is irrelevant.

:canadian: Well Fetch I actually had not considered that before.;)

[Xion X2]

Agree 100%, except for the part about ATI's R600 series being inferior. So far, the XT (which is targeted to compete with the 640MB GTS) performs more closely to the GTX. There is no reason to believe that the XTX will perform worse than the GTX. As to the Ultra, it is going for $1000 a pop- at that price I doubt ATi really needs to have a card to compete with the Ultra.

Oh well. We'll see next month how this all plays out.

All of this is incredible speculation because we've yet to see any DX10 benches, but based on what we've seen so far, I'm not convinced yet that the XTX will outperform the 8800GTX. Remember the 1950XTX ATI released before? Everyone thought the extra GDDR4 memory on the card would help it perform a lot better than the 1900XTX because of the extra memory bandwidth, but that was never the case. It was just barely faster in the benchmarks.

Increasing memory bandwidth isn't enough; you need a faster core clock to go along with it. And I don't see how ATI can go much higher than 845mHz on the core like the overclocked XT Dailytech was testing which was underperforming in comparison to an overclocked 8800GTX and getting beat by the 8800GTS in a few benches.

I also heard that card was in limited quantity. Is that still accurate?

[Heinz68]

Well if ATI was still Canadian then nationalism could be factored into loyalty. Now that they are both American it is irrelevant.
Hey! ATI is still located in the best neighbor USA can wish for and that is CANADA.
More precisely Markham ON, near Toronto, only the ownership changed.

I don’t think nationalism has anything to do with this otherwise we would not buy ALL the NVIDIA and ATI products made in China.

[Heinz68]

24 April 2007 theINQUIRER (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39150)
GeForce 8800 Ultra is just an overclocked G80

Repeat of 7800GTX - 7800GTX512 without the RAM part
I remember the above very well.
I was waiting that time for the ATI X1800 XTX coming late on the market.
The 7800GTX 512MB was supposed to be the NVIDIA spoiler but for sure it wasn’t.
It was overpriced in very short supply, almost like paper launch.

At that time I decided to buy the 7800GTX 256 MB much better deal.
On most reviews the ATI X1800 XTX was little faster but since it just came out it was about $100.00 more, in my opinion not worth the money.

I hope ATI did learn something about this and will keep the price competitive right on the introduction day and hopefully they will have the retailers cooperation.

[J-Mag]

I don’t think nationalism has anything to do with this otherwise we would not buy ALL the NVIDIA and ATI products made in China.

Yeah I was being simplistic. I realize that most companies are multinational these days. Either way, the companies' nation in which their headquarters is located is where most of their revenue goes.

[Xion X2]

[Edited, nm.]

[Delbert]

Maybe the G80 core actually has 160 shaders by design, but only 128 on current released products due to yields ?
Perhaps the Ultra's are the full monty ones that actually have all intact... ? thats the only explaination i can come up with to justify the 'limited availablity' and '$999' rumours that seem to be flying around.