NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 Ultra almost needs no introduction, it's quite simply the fastest graphics card on the planet. But, the title came at a heavy price premium until we learned at Computex that NVIDIA and its partners were set to drop the price. Initial reference clocked cards were priced at a ridiculous $899 and then EVGA's e-GeForce 8800 Ultra SuperClocked was priced at around $919. Both of these cards represented poor value for money and were definitely products for those with more money than sense. Things have changed though, especially after the noise NVIDIA's partners made at Computex. The first partner to reduce its prices is XFX, which supplied us with the Extreme version. - Bit-Tech

XFX GeForce 8800 Ultra Extreme Video Card Review

The first thing to note is that XFX's card is clocked appreciably higher than the reference clocks, with the core clock increased from 612MHz to 650MHz, shader from 1500MHz to 1605MHz and memory from 2160MHz to 2260MHz. These are quite impressive increases, but the card isn't clocked quite as high as EVGA's e-GeForce 8800 Ultra SuperClocked that we checked out at the end of last month. Having said that though, this isn't XFX's flagship GeForce 8800 Ultra, that title goes to XXX edition, which is clocked at 675MHz core, 1667MHz shader and 2300MHz memory for the time being.

We say for the time being, because XFX is already planning to release a faster version of the card that runs at 685MHz core, 1667MHz shader and 2300MHz memory very soon. XFX tells us that this card will simply replace the current XXX edition and will come in at the same price point, it's always nice to get something a little extra for free, even if it is only another 10MHz on the core! Not surprisingly, the card looks the same as any other GeForce 8800 Ultra on the market, and the cooling solution is NVIDIA's standard design and the only differentiating factor is the sticker in the centre of the fan.

After some tweaking, we finally got XFX's GeForce 8800 Ultra running stable at 661MHz core and 2358MHz on the memory. At higher GPU clocks, the driver would crash and reset itself and at higher memory clocks, we suffered from a lot of tearing in all of the games we tested. The increases aren't all that impressive and, if we're honest, this particular XFX GeForce 8800 Ultra Extreme is a poor overclocker. Even if we took the fact that this isn't XFX's fastest GeForce 8800 Ultra into account, it's still a poor overclocker and this card looks to have only just made it into this particular speed bin.

For the most part, XFX's GeForce 8800 Ultra Extreme performs almost exactly the same as EVGA's e-GeForce 8800 Ultra SuperClocked card, despite the slightly different clock speeds. While it doesn't have an edge over EVGA's card, it's can still be regarded as one of the fastest graphics cards we've ever tested. The fact that XFX has an even higher clocked version than this just is the icing on the cake. But that's not all though, because XFX went so far as to include a few cherries on top of the cake too; the price is what makes this card more attractive than any other GeForce 8800 Ultra on the market at the moment.

Despite having the essentially the same performance as EVGA's card, XFX manages to undercut EVGA by almost $75. Thus far, there has been no indication as to when we're going to see NVIDIA's next flagship GPU and partners are unlikely to release any faster GeForce 8800 Ultra's, so the Step-Up programme is null if you were to purchase in the next couple of weeks. Secondly, if you're one of those that upgrades every two years a two year warranty probably isn't going to concern you all that much if you sell the card onto someone else, because both warranties are non transferable in Europe.

XFX's GeForce 8800 Ultra Extreme is probably the only GeForce 8800 Ultra that represents reasonable value for money at the moment. Until now, GeForce 8800 Ultra's from NVIDIA's board partners have been priced well out of the reach of most hardcore enthusiasts and thus have only been a viable purchase for those with more money than sense. Thankfully, XFX has delivered a GeForce 8800 Ultra with decent clock speeds and a very aggressive price and until other board partners follow suit, XFX's GeForce 8800 Ultra Extreme is the pick of the bunch.