The graphics card market is flooded with competing companies all offering the same version of a product. Many times, though, these video cards are identical to each other with the only differences being the company selling the card and the sticker that has been placed on the card's cooler. The reason behind this similarity in products is quite simple, many of today's video card companies are simply buying the parts pre-assembled from the GPU vendor. Today we are zeroing in on the ASUS GeForce 8800 Ultra, a card which turns out to be identical to the reference GeForce 8800 Ultra board, and we wonder when we will begin seeing more unique graphics cards from NVIDIA's partners. - Digit-Life

ASUS Extreme N8800 Ultra 768MB Graphics Review

A trend we have been seeing in the video card market is many so-called graphics card manufacturers buying pre-assembled video cards instead of manufacturing them, and then simply sprinkling some magic marketing sauce on the product, all the while claiming their card offers the highest grade of quality, performance and unique features. But what can we say other than this is what we like to call smart marketing! Now we aren't going to place all of the blame on the manufacturers. The graphics business is more competitive than it has ever been, and NVIDIA and ATI are delivering their GPU's to companies on very short notice.

The ASUS video card is the same as the base NVIDIA reference design. This means that the card is still manufactured at the NVIDIA third-party plant. ASUS has nothing to do with its manufacturing. The cooler works in the same manner, just like on the GeForce 8800 GTX. Only the heatsink is of a slightly different shape, and the housing is bigger. The cooler of the GeForce 8800 Ultra is very similar to that of the GTX. The core and memory chips, as well as the NVIO along with some power supply elements, are all covered by the heatsink base. And a copper plate is making contact with the GPU for better cooling.

You might have noticed that we also tested the GeForce 8800 Ultra under SLI mode. This powerful configuration, in our opinion, is only justified if it is used with the highest resolutions along with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled. Unfortunately, NVIDIA has slowed down its development of SLI drivers this year. This means that the drivers still don't support a number of popular games as far as SLI is concerned, even though these games are available in driver profiles. And until these issues are resolved, we see no point for an expensive GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI configuration.

The ASUS Extreme N8800 Ultra 768MB is the fastest and the most expensive graphics card to date. For emphasis, we repeat that this specific model is the same as the NVIDIA reference card. It doesn't differ from the GeForce 880 Ultra cards from other vendors. The only thing that might potentially set it apart is its bundle. The largest drawback of the GeForce 8800 Ultra cards is its cooling system, particularly its wide and large housing, which makes the graphics card incompatible with some motherboards. Going back to the drivers, we notice some improvements in single card performance, but still far from perfect.