Today NVIDIA Corporation introduced the world's fastest graphics processing unit, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra. With over 100GB/sec of memory bandwidth on tap, and 128 stream processors running in tandem at 1.5GHz, NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 Ultra redefines the words high performance. See what's been changed in this new GPU and how it performs!

HotHardware: Throughout out entire battery of benchmarks, the new GeForce 8800 Ultra was the top performer. In every GPU bound test, whether running in a single card configuration or double-up in SLI mode, the GeForce 8800 Ultra put up the best scores regardless of game, resolution, or configuration. In general, the card is about 3% to 12% faster then the GeForce 8800 GTX and it's in another league in comparison to the aging Radeon X1950 XTX. The news isn't all good, however. NVIDIA has set the MSRP of the GeForce 8800 Ultra at an extremely expensive $829. Considering the price of standard GeFore 8800 GTX cards has fallen to about $550 and pre-overclocked GTX cards that will perform similarly to the reference clocked Ultra are available for a only few dollards more, the Ultra doesn't represent the best value

TechReport: I also prefer the Ultra to the option of running two GeForce 8800 GTS cards in SLI, for a variety of reasons. The 8800 GTS SLI config we tested was faster than the Ultra in some cases, but it was slower in others. Two cards take up more space, draw more power, and generate more heat, but that's not the worst of it. SLI's ability to work with the game of the moment has always been contingent on driver updates and user profiles, which is in itself a disadvantage, but SLI support has taken a serious hit in the transition to Windows Vista. We found that SLI didn't scale well in either Half-Life 2: Episode One or Supreme Commander, and these aren't minor game titles. I was also surprised to have to reboot in order to switch into SLI mode, since Nvidia fixed that issue in its Windows XP drivers long ago. Obviously, Nvidia has higher priorities right now on the Vista driver front, but that's just the problem. SLI likely won't get proper attention until Nvidia addresses its other deficits compared to AMD's Catalyst drivers for Vista, including an incomplete control panel UI, weak overclocking tools, and some general functionality issues like the Oblivion AA problem we encountered.

Another pretty similar reviews can be found on Bit-Tech, Firingsquad, Guru3D, HardOCP.

Ed.note: I was hoping for a little more performance increase for a $200 price increase. At least the 6800 super-ultra edition had a good bit better performance. What do you think?