Nvidia Geforce 8800GTX or the 8800Ultra?

[TRDCorolla1]

I searched the last few pages of this forum in the General section and I don't think this has been posted yet (although a lot of people have been inquiring about it). But which video card is worth the money? Both are in the $500+ range of course, with the Ultra being super fast. But is it really worth it? The Ultra version reminds me an overclocked GTX.

 

[Kage]

GTX. You could easily overclock the GTX to Ultra speeds, because thats all it is inside, with higher clocks. Trust me

 

[TRDCorolla1]

That's what I figured too. I don't personally have that graphic chipset myself, but they look awfully similar. I don't think I would want to pay $100 more for a top of the line 8800Ultra when I can do the same for cheaper 8800GTX card. Kind of like a CPU. It's similar to comparing an E6750 to an Intel Extreme model or something similar.

 

[Kage]

Heck, since its basically the same card, you could probably risk dumping the Ultra bios on the GTX, and it wouldn't even bat an eyelid.
Because it has the same pipelines and memory doesnt it?

 

[TRDCorolla1]

The 8800 Ultra difference are in the clock rate and I guess has a different cooling solution too. They both share the same PCB and memory (Samsung GDDR3) count as 8800 GTX. The only other difference is of course, the .8ns refresh rate which gives the Ultra a rated clock of some 1200MHz or somewhere around there.

The RAM is about 20% faster than on GTX (103.6GB/sec peak bandwidth), and with shader clock up more than 10% and base clock up nearly 7%. Nvidia claims a performance increase of around 5-10% versus GTX over a range of titles and at a range of resolutions.

That's strange how the memory is 20% faster when comparing the Ultra to the GTX, yet overall performance is only a 10% increase?

That's very, VERY insignificant to me and not enough to justify the pricing for the Ultra.

 

[Kage]

Yeah, just overclock the GTX.

I'm getting the GTX for my brothers build next week... Either that or 2x 8800GTS 640's. I'm thinking of the future you see, and would wonder if 2 would be better than 1 in later games.

 

[esa193]

lol difference will be like 3fps

 

[hascet]

The difference is a lot more than 3FPS.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=f0e3hV-t51E

 

[Spartan109]

ultra=expensive