EVGA 8800Ultra Superclocked review
Author: Luka Rakamaric
Date: 08 Oct 2007

When NVIDIA introduced its 8800Ultra model, it didn't receive very good marks in the reviews. Granted, it was and still is the fastest card around, but it came at an unreasonably high price. You could almost get two 8800GTS 640 cards for the price of one Ultra, and now with the price reductions you can get two GTSs and save some money. Still, NVIDIA wanted to ensure that ATI?s HD2900XT had as hard time coming to the market as possible, and that could be no mistake about who has the fastest model. EVGA wouldn?t be EVGA if they didn?t introduce a Superclocked version of this card as well to set some new standards for gaming.

So, we have before us two EVGA 8800Ultra Superclocked cards, each of them powered by a G80 GPU clocked at 657 MHz. the stock Ultra has a core clock of 612 MHz, and the GTX has 575 MHz. 657 MHz is quite an increase from the original 612 MHz and because of this, the cards have a ribbed back panel that passively cools the cards from the top side, and it helps if your CPU cooler or a rear 120mm fan is blowing right at it. Since the stock Ultra is a very hot card, overclocking it required that back plate. Other than that, these are ordinary Ultra cards, with 768 MB of very fast GDDR3 memory, a very efficient cooler with an upward displaced fan and two 6 pin power connectors. The memory operates at 1125 MHz, or 45 MHz more than stock, just to add a little more bandwidth. The third value that was also increased is the shader clock of the GPU. NVIDIA?s whole series 8 lineup clocks the shaders much higher than the rest of the GPU, and in case of a stock Ultra, the clock is 1500 MHz, up from 1350 of the GTX. The Superclocked Ultra edition clocks the shaders at 1664 MHz, which is more than 10% increase. EVGA added its own logo to the cooler cover, not just the fan as some other companies do. The card has two DVI-I outputs, both dual link, and a 9-pin TV out connector.