NVIDIA is getting its 3-way SLI ready for its November 12th launch. To run your own 3-Way SLI setup you will need the following three things. First, you will need the upcoming 3-way SLI drivers. Second, you will need a 680i SLI motherboard or a soon to be released 780a/780i SLI motherboard that must include at least 3 PCIe x16 slots. Third, you will need to have three GeForce 8800 GTX or 8800 Ultra graphics cards(It is a necessity to have 2 SLI connectors on each card). Lastly you will need a 3-way SLI bridge card. Interestingly it looks like the upcoming G92 won't support 3-way SLI because it only has one SLI connector per card.

The guys over at Expertview are sending new set of benchmark scores, this time comparing the GeForce 8800 GT video card to its big brother GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MB. Using Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600@3600MHz, nForce 650i Ultra motherboard, 2GB of DDR2 memory at 800MHz with CL5-5-5-15 timings, ForceWare 167.26 beta and Windows XP SP2, the 512MB version of GeForce 8800 GT have reached 9648 marks while the GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MB video card have topped out 11611 marks. Both 3DMark06 runs are performed using 1280x1024 resolution with 4x AA and 8x AF. The GeForce 8800 GT is set to be released on October 29th.

Nvidia has released the new Official 162.22 and 163.11 Beta Forceware drivers for Windows Vista.
The 162.11 drivers are for the GeForce 6,7,8 series and some of the improvements include better DX10 SLI support and increased total graphics memory.
The 163.11 Forceware are only for the GeForce 8 series and are almost specifically pointed for improved DX10 performance in World in Conflict.

Download

Today PNY announced the availability of their branded NVIDIA 8800 Ultra Standard and 8800 Ultra Overclocked graphics cards. The PNY cards share all the same features with the other 8800 Ultra graphics cards currently on the market. The stock PNY 8800 Ultra will be clocked at 612MHz on the core, 1500MHz on the shader clock, and 2.16GHz on the memory. PNY has set pricing for the standard 8800 Ultra at $799.99. The overclocked version of the PNY 8800 Ultra will carry a core clock of 648MHz, shader clock of 1512MHz, and a memory clock of 2.24GHz. The overclocked card will be available in June with a MSRP of $849.99. That price should make the PNY card one of the lowest cost overclocked 8800 Ultra cards on the market. Both cards will come with three year warranty (plus an additional 2 years upon completion of a registration form on PNY's website).

Leadtek Research Inc., known globally for extreme visual graphics technology development, today launched a new high end graphics card - the WinFast PX8800 ULTRA - Leviathan, equipped with an advanced specially designed water cooling system. Unlike WinFast PX8800 ULTRA, PX8800 ULTRA - Leviathan comes with increased GPU and memory core clocks up to 684/2322MHz and 768MB/384 bit GDDR3 memory. The water cooling module that answers for these frequencies is actually a 120x120x25mm aluminum alloy radiator hooked up to a copper water block and a 12V pump with 1200 ml/minute minimum flow rate. All this is fully-sealed and filled with Anti-Corrosion additive for long-time operation without further maintenance. Leadtek will show the WinFast PX8800 ULTRA - Leviathan at Computex Taipei 2007 in Hall 1, A726.

EVGA today announced its superclocked version of the DirectX 10 e-GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card. EVGA's implementation of the Geforce 8800 Ultra card includes 768MB of high speed GDDR3 memory, core clock speed of 655MHz and 2.25GHz memory clock. The EVGA e-GeForce 8800 Ultra Superclocked has a recommended retail price of $899.99 in United States and €899 in Europe. In addition to the e-GeForce 8800 Ultra Superclocked EVGA also introduced the e-GeForce 8800 Ultra KO (knock-out) version (P/N: 768-P2-N885 in the US, and P/N: 768-P2-E885 in Europe) priced at $859.99 in United States and €859 in Europe. The EVGA e-GeForce 8800 Ultra KO has also been tuned to 636MHz core clock speed and identical memory speed of 2.25GHz. Both video cards will be available starting May 15th, 2007 through EVGA's network of e-tailers, retailers and distributors.

Alienware and Dell, are now taking enthusiasts to the next level by offering the mega-powerful NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards on high-performance Alienware Area 51, Alienware Aurora and Dell XPS gaming desktops. The SLI-Ready GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics processor delivers outstanding graphics quality for even the most challenging and complex gaming and multimedia applications. Systems configured with multi-core processors and the GeForce 8800 Ultra GPUs will be primed to take on this year's highly anticipated DirectX 10 gaming titles as well as next-generation OpenGL titles. Dell XPS gaming system details and pricing are available at www.dell.com/gaming. Alienware system details and pricing are available at www.alienware.com/desktops.

BFG Technologies, Inc., a leading North American and European NVIDIA supplier of advanced 3D graphics cards, motherboards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MB PCI Express and the BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MB PCI Express Water Cooled Edition graphics cards.

Today NVIDIA introduced the world's fastest graphics processing unit (GPU), the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra. The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra performs an average of between 10 and 15% faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX GPU. Here is a preliminary list of NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra reviews currently on the net.

PC Perspective | Legit Reviews | bit-tech.net | [H] Enthusiast | HotHardware | Guru 3D | iXBT(Russian) | HardwareZone | HEXUS.net | AnandTech

Today is the official launch day of NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card and Sparkle is one of the first companies revealing final silicon. It comes in two flavors, an 'ordinary' GeForce 8800 Ultra and a beefed up version named Calibre P880 ULTRA. While the first one features 612MHz/2160MHz core and memory clock respectively, the thermoelectric cooled (TEC) P880 got super fast 650MHz/2250MHz instead. The prices of these cards are unannounced yet.

As we reported before, the NDA for NVIDIA's latest GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics will expire on the 2nd of May. HardSpell has pulled out today the first official board pictures and real performance benchmark scores. The review confirms that the 8800 Ultra card is clocked at 612MHz core and uses 384bit/768MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 2160MHz. Follow this link and read the full article.

NDAs about the GeForce 8800 Ultra will expire on the 2nd of May. The final speeds of the card will end up at 612 MHz for the core and 2160 MHz for the memory. The original plan was to have the chip running at 650 MHz, but it looks like NVIDIA didn't push the limits as far as expected.

The shaders of this card will run at 1.5 GHz, which will make them faster than the R600 shader units. The card should end up with a $900 price tag.

So we all know that there are signs of a GeForce 8800 Ultra everywhere and PCINLIFE now has a picture of it. The picture you see below has appeared at PCGH with no direct link to the source. The card is much longer than a GeForce 8800GTX and features a massive heatsink.A membership at PCINLIFE is required to view the picture in their forums.

From the latest Forceware 158.16, NVIDIA has at least four new G80 chips we haven't seen before. The first one is G80-400, then there is a G80-200 chip and finally G80-600 is listed. Last but not least the mystical Geforce 8800 Ultra makes an appearance.

The most important one is the new card ID // 0194, which is called NVIDIA Geforce 8800 Ultra. This new driver should really boost the performance of all G8X parts.

Here are the new cards.
// 0190 - NVIDIA G80-400
// 0191 - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
// 0192 - NVIDIA G80-200
// 0193 - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
// 0194 - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra
// 0197 - NVIDIA G80-600

NVIDIA plans to play a "trick" on us all - to compete with ATI's R600 chip, which is hopefully getting closer by the minute, NVIDIA should launch a GeForce 8800 Ultra card. The Inquirer, which we all have a problem trusting now and then, brings shocking news: the 8800 Ultra will be a revamped 8800 GTX card (it will use the same PCB, but a different cooler), and instead of being mass produced, it will be manufactured in "tens of units, not tens of thousands". This should therefore be a swift marketing move: NVIDIA will perhaps be able to claim the crown of performance king, yet us, end users, will not have access to the powerful cards.

It will be difficult to find one card, yet alone two for SLI.

Graphics Card Tidbits Part V - Update

Today in a week we will be enlightened on what NVIDIA was working on during the last few months. Will there be a GeForce 8800 Ultra or a 8850 GTX or a dual GPU card very likely named 8850 GX2? The names put aside, NVIDIA will give AMD/ATI again a run for their money, though things could change very likely another week later. It's all over town already that Tunisia will be the birthplace for AMD's first product troika (K10 CPUs, RD790 Chipset and R6x0 GPU family) on April 23rd. The invited crowd, most of them being journalists, will among other things, get shown Techdemo which Fuad got a screenshot from. He's got a second file as well, probably out of an official Powerpoint presentation, that finally solves the naming scheme riddle of the R600 high end cards. AMD's upcoming high end boards will be called X2900-Series.

According to several of NVIDIA's partners, NVIDIA is planning to release their GeForce 8800 Ultra together with the soon to be released GeForce 8600 series. The word in the halls is saying that NVIDIA is planning to release several GPU's on the same day. The 8300 GS, 8400 GS, 8500 GT, 8600 GT, 8600 GTS and the new 'monster', the 8800 Ultra. According to the same sources, the GeForce 8800 Ultra will be an overclocked version of the 8800 GTX aimed to deal with the upcoming threat from ATI's R600. The exact specification and technical details are still unknown at this stage. It is known that many of NVIDIA's partners are preparing for a hard launch.

w0mbat, from the VR-Zone forums, has found the following information in the latest Forceware drivers for Vista :

NVIDIA_G80.DEV_0191.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX"
NVIDIA_G80.DEV_0193.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS"
NVIDIA_G80.DEV_0194.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra"
NVIDIA_G80.DEV_019E.1 = "NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600"
NVIDIA_G84.DEV_0400.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS"
NVIDIA_G84.DEV_0402.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT"
NVIDIA_G86.DEV_0421.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT"
NVIDIA_G86.DEV_0422.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS"
NVIDIA_G86.DEV_0423.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8300 GS"

It seems that NVIDIA is planning for a higher clocked GeForce 8800 Ultra and a cheaper GeForce 8400GS card. Will this be enough to compete against the R600? Or will we have to wait until the 8900 series?