[Oppus]

Well of coarse I'd like the best video card known to mankind! But $800 omg! I almost feel like that's taking it in the arse, at that price. What do you guys think?

Of coarse if i were to get one, it would have to be the OC edition. Ideally BFG. Or am i friggen stupid for even thinkin about it. Have a 8800gts 320 atm. Can ebay that for $250 easily im sure.

I need to complete my Fozzik Recommended $2000 system.

Case Antec 900 (uber dust magnet thou) i use viscon sheets on inlets
Mobo badaxe2
Memory 4gb Gskill
processor E6600
Sound some 7.1 i got from ebay for lol $10, works great actually- Cmedia 8768
Antel Lansing speakers
22 in widescreen Samsung, and 17 in samsung (duel monitors is the only way to go imo)
G15 keyboard bought a keyboard vacuum cleaner too lol
have xp pro, and vista 64 business dual boot system
Seagate 500gb and 350gb drives
cheap A drive,
Lightscribe DVD rewrite
LightOn DVD rewrite
Plextor External DVD rewrite
Corsair 520 PSU

[Malosar]

I'd say you have to be crazy to pay that price for an Ultra, or your just plain rich and the value of the dollar means nothing to you. I think the OC versions of the GTX are probably better value for money/performance, like the EVGA Superclocked at $600. Main difference between a OC GTX and an Ultra is going to be the memory speed.

[Fozzik]

The Ultra is absolutely, completely, a waste of a lot of money. I'm really not sure at all why you would be thinking about it, other than some kind of idea that because it's more expensive it must be in some way better.

The Ultra is only slightly faster than the GTX, and is dramatically more expensive (I did read somewhere that it was coming down in price, but still...). It doesn't make any sense to buy it, especially if you already have an 8-series card. *boggle*

If you aren't happy with the performance you are getting from the GTS 320MB... then sell it off and pick up the GTX. It will actually give you a substantial performance boost for the money.

Buying something because it's "the best" is really not a good strategy. Two weeks after you get it, it will inevitably NOT be the best anymore... that's the way the industry works.

[rabb1t]

An Ultra is completely not worth it for the price. You will only see a small increase at the highest resolutions (and let's be honest here, since you have a 1680x1050 and probably 1280x1024 you are nowhere near the highest resolution of a 2560x1600 screen, even if you add those two res together.)

The base GTX is plenty. The cost increase for the power gained of the ultra is not worth it. (Even more so for OCed or specially cooled ones.) I'd recommend going with dual GTX before going with a single Ultra. (Seriously. Dual would be way more powerful down the line when physics are offloaded onto the GPU.)

Even if you consider a more modest 8800 Ultra, such as this Evga one at $680 post rebate, it still doesn't have enough of a gain over the GTX to be worth that $100 price increase.

Check out how pitifully small these differences are, even at 2560x1600

If that 8800 GTS is less than 3 months old, and an Evga card, you can use Evga's Step Up policy and loose nothing. (Though you may be out a GPU for a week or two.)

[dakyres]

Originally Posted by Oppus

Well of coarse I'd like the best video card known to mankind! But $800 omg! I almost feel like that's taking it in the arse, at that price. What do you guys think?

The Ultra has been shown on several sites, Anandtech being one, to have no real gain over the standard GTX, and in fact to be worse in some cases. So....if you WHERE looking at 800$ ...next month get 2 GTX's ...for SLI...for less than the Ultra..

[rabb1t]

As per my post above (we posted at the same time hehe) you can get an Ultra for as low as ~$680, well below the $800 referenced in the original post. For something that expensive you shouldn't be looking at anything less than something like the Black Pearl. (yeeearrr )

However, one GTX is plenty. You won't even need to dual card them unless you want extreme performance and the physics boost (which isn't even used yet.)

[Oppus]

Well if prices are going down that much, I will wait a month. I also checked the EVGA upgrade thing and my card is 1 month too old. I'll defer to y'alls wisdom.
Was excited because the card was really the last thing I needed, for my Fozzik system

I also just got my free upgrade to Vista and will Install it on my other drive, so i can have xp pro and vista64business on same system. Dual boot setup

Btw thanx Foz for the great info and guide to building my 1st system. Was fun, little frustrating when i had bad ram from Corsair there. But its running pretty sweet with the 4gb of Gskill.

[rabb1t]

Originally Posted by Oppus

Was excited because the card was really the last thing I needed, for my Fozzik system

Still be excited, just don't get the Ultra. The only real diff between the Ultra and the GTX is a different core speed (and sometimes a different cooler). For that ~$150 difference you really aren't gaining anything. It isn't like the diff between a GTX and GTX, where you are talking about a pipeline count difference. Speaking from a technical standpoint there is no difference between an OCed GTX and a lower speed Ultra, however, the price difference can be huge.

Here, check this out...

Evga 8800 GTX Superclocked $600
Core 621 MHz
Mem 2000 MHz
Power 450w 28a

Evga 8800 Ultra $700
Core 612 MHz
Mem 2160 MHz
Power 500w 34a

The stats are almost identical, yet you are paying $100 more, or 17% more $, for basically no real gain (core -1.5%, mem +7.5%) and a card that takes a bit more power.

Some here would say get what you want if it will make you happier. However, I'd point out that a $100 difference can be spent in other areas and make a larger difference. Like you have some sound card that you don't even know what it is - that $100 would easily pay for an X-Fi XtremeGamer ($90 now, as low as $50 on sale). Also consider that $100 covers 2 of the 4 gig you have.

The difference between a GTS and GTX, totally worth the money. The difference between a GTX and an Ultra, even though it can be as small as $50 after rebates, I don't know if it would be worth it. Technologically they are nearly identical. That small difference won't yield a visible result, the tests show that, but the higher clock speeds and higher power use may yield a noticeable result in terms of PC volume, heat generated, power used (note you would be very close to that 500w rec with your PSU), etc.

The prices aren’t likely to change much in the future. The cards have to have something that distinguishes them to the uniformed user. That’s most easily accomplished through a price difference and a name easily recognized. (“Ultra” is easily identified while most would go ‘wtf does GTX mean?’)

Again, just my thoughts, but if you want to spend more I'd recommend going to dual GTX over moving to an Ultra. I just don't think you'd see a difference between the GTX and Ultra. (Though such a move would require a new PSU and would be complete and total overkill for your monitors.)

As Ice_Hole would say, get what makes you happy. If you don't mind the cost and power differences get the Ultra. We are just pointing out that it really isn't any more powerful, and in some cases, the price difference between the two can be huge.

[evilsofa]

Originally Posted by rabb1t

Speaking from a technical standpoint there is no difference between an OCed GTX and a lower speed Ultra, however, the price difference can be huge.

Today's prices at newegg are $530 for the 8800GTX and $680 for the 8800 Ultra, a $150 difference.

Users can overclock a GTX's core clock speed and memory clock speed (maybe as high as the Ultra, maybe not, your mileage may vary), but not the shader clock speed. The Ultra overclocks all three. So, the one thing you are getting for $150 that you otherwise can't get is that you are overclocking the shader clock speed by 150Mhz (from 1350Mhz to 1500Mhz).

Doesn't seem worth it to me. That $150 would be a lot better spent on your CPU (getting, say, an E6700 instead of an E6600) or an additional 2GB of RAM or another 500GB hard drive.

[rabb1t]

Originally Posted by evilsofa

Today's prices at newegg are $530 for the 8800GTX and $680 for the 8800 Ultra, a $150 difference.

If you count rebates in there, sure, but if you don't count rebates, and you look at other manufacturer prices things can be very different. Like if you look at XFX's high-end Ultra it's $874, no rebate offered. Even if you look at their card that matches the Evga $680 post rebate one (the $874 one above is a faster speed) they don't offer a rebate, making the card the base $700 price.

So, the one thing you are getting for $150 that you otherwise can't get is that you are overclocking the shader clock speed by 150Mhz (from 1350Mhz to 1500Mhz).

Where are you getting that from? I don't see shader speeds referenced.

[evilsofa]

Originally Posted by rabb1t

Where are you getting that from? I don't see shader speeds referenced.

Originally Posted by HardOCP

It runs with a core frequency of 612 MHz (versus 575 MHz on the GTX). The stream processors are clocked at 1.5 GHz (versus 1.35 GHz on the 8800 GTX). Finally, the memory is clocked at 1080 MHz (2.16 GHz DDR), compared to 900 MHz (1.8 GHz DDR) on the GTX.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?...hlbnRodXNpYXN0

I had thought that altering the shader clock speed wasn't possible, but upon further research I find that apparently you can do so using ATi Tool and maybe some other utilities.

But I haven't even bothered to overclock my 8800GTX. It's just not necessary - there aren't many systems in which the 8800GTX will be the weak link.

[Malosar]

Leadtek 8800PX Ultra Leviathan

What a monster, and it comes with the water cooling unit. I believe that is the highest clocked 8800 available @ 684MHz core and 2322MHz Memory

[rabb1t]

It is important to be very clear that you mean it has 'its own liquid cooling tank/radiator/pump device'. That's not something a normal liquid peep would want.

Interesting card / self-contained watercooling, but I don't know if it's the best idea due to the odd design. Too little gain for too much trouble if ya ask me.

[Malosar]

Yeah I assume it's targetted at the consumers with too much money and no experience with water cooling.

[rabb1t]

Yeah, but it's own unit is a double-edged sword since that's an externally based unit. They'd have to set it up weaving the tubes through the case, which likely means going through a PCI slot, which can get really messy if they need to change the position. Overall it seems simpler, but isn't really noob friendly for most cases.

[evilsofa]

I don't know if noobs would be buying an $900 card... those who would get a card like this would get a case with the appropriate rubber-lined holes, like the Antec P182 or P190:

http://www.bit-tech.net/content_imag.../newthumb3.jpg

But seriously, does this card run faster than a pair of vanilla 8800GTS 640MB in SLI? If not, this is one of the few occasions where SLI would make more sense than the fastest single card.

[rabb1t]

Well, it's not a lot faster than the GTX. I don't recall the comparison of GTX vs. GTS in SLI. For some reason not a lot of peeps are doing those comparisons.

One thing we can't gauge though is things like the Quantum Physics potential in SLI vs. single card. In theory you'd get better physics from 2 cards.