NVIDIA has absolutely dominated the GPU market for the last six months, what with ATI/AMD's DX10 parts nowhere to be seen, and recently the 8600 series completed their DX10 line up from top to bottom, or so we thought! Last week saw the introduction of yet another card from the green camp, but this time it's seriously, stupendously high end -- the 8800 Ultra. Yes the Ultra moniker is back. So why are NVIDIA adding this card to the pack when they have no real AMD threat on the radar? To tell you the truth, I'm not quite sure...

Video Card Comparison Chart Card: 8800 GTS 8800 GTX 8800 Ultra Chip: G80 G80 G80 Transistors: 681m 681m 681m DX support: DX10 + SM4.0 DX10 + SM4.0 DX10 + SM4.0 Process: 90nm 90nm 90nm Stream Processors: 96 FP32 scalar 128 FP32 scalar 128 FP32 scalar ROPS: 20 24 24 Core Clock: 500 MHz 575 MHz 612 MHz Shader Clock: 1200 MHz 1350 MHz 1500 MHz Memory Clock: 800 MHz 900 MHz 1080 MHz Memory interface: 320 bit 384 bit 384 bit Memory Bandwidth: 64 GB/s 86.4 GB/s 103.68 GB/s Memory Size: 320 / 640 MB 768 MB 768 MB

For all intent and purpose, the Ultra is a GTX with higher clock speeds (core/shader/memory). It does use a new silicon revision (A3) which has been slightly tweaked to offer better power utilization and overclocking headroom, but generally this is nothing more than a GTX on steroids with a slightly modified cooling solution.

Last week we all saw the launch of AMD's long awaited R600 based HD2900 XT, a card that unfortunately is nowhere near a problem for the 8800 GTX to handle performance-wise. This begs the question of why the Ultra has been launched, at least from the end users perspective. The Ultra seems to be less about offering a card that makes any kind of sense, and more about setting a new price point in the market, an opportunity AMD has allowed them by offering little competition. I've said it before, you don't want an NVIDIA monopoly, bad things will happen. So, the cost of such a beast? The estimated retail price is set to be around £500/$829+. Compare this to the GTX, which can now be had for around £350/$599+ and you have to wonder what's going on here. But let's leave all this to one side for now and face the fact that this is one desirable card regardless of how much sense it makes, so let's discuss the retail card that's on review today.

The card we're testing is not a basic reference model, it's EVGA's top of the line part (bar the watercooled Black Pearl) - the 8800 Ultra Superclocked. Go here to check other Ultra based GPU's from EVGA. This is one of the fastest cards on the market, with yet further increases in clock speeds -- 650MHz on the core, and 1125MHz on the memory, so let's see if these extra clocks are worth the extra cash over a GTX.