GeForce 8800 Ultra is just an overclocked G80

[m21s]

From you know who...

NVIDIA IS BUSY preparing its answer for spoiling AMD's homecoming, and we managed to learn that Nvidia worked hard on improving the clock performance and power consumption on the new revision of G80 chips, which are going to be used for the spring refresh part.
The GeForce 8800 Ultra comes with 768MB of GDDR-3 memory clocked at very aggressive 1.175 GHz in DDR mode, or 2.35 GHz. The bandwidth has now grown to surpass any upcoming competition, regardless of the width of the memory bus itself. Nvidia will have around 112GB/s on their disposal, tucking in nicely with GPU clocked at 675 MHz, which is the default clock of 8600 GTS as well.

Our sources have informed us that the clock of 128 scalar units inside the GPU didn't change in a dramatical manner, so we can expect shader clock to be from 1.35 to 1.55 GHz. Anything more would be a surprise at this point in time (manufacturing process, that is). Card comes with a new cooler, just like in the old days of 7800GTX and 7800GTX512.

Nvidia is now preparing a press event, so your usual suspects will be going to the airports again, getting the NDA briefings and releasing a review of the cards around May 1st, with products in stores on May 15th.

Only problem was that controlling information that is floating around usually backfires, so forcing people to log on to http://paranoid.nvidia.com when opening PDF's with roadmaps, logging of the IPs etc. etc... really isn't doing the trick, since Nvidia still manufactures products in China. $999 is a tag for limited edition of products, while real future volumes of this product remain uncertain.

Guys, if you really want to control the information, ditch partners and move production to North America.

 

[yacoub]

For $499 that would sell nicely!

 

[Pugnate]

I think you missed it by $500.

 

[yacoub]

nah I think THEY missed the price point by about $500.

 

[Matt2]

Hmmm... lots of bandwidth indeed.

It's just another 7800GTX 512 that is good for nothing except winning the benchmark war. I really want to see the official MSRP of this thing. If it is indeed $999 then it wont matter how much it beats R600 by. Unless it's over 2x faster (which it's not going to be), Nvidia needs to put down the pipe (Or pass it ). Another thing that sucks is that according to the article, it's a soft launch. I hate soft launches, but I guess that reflects the quantities that are going to available.

I find this article kinda confusing. The title says that 8800 Ultra is an overclocked G80, but then the (st)INQ says that "Nvidia worked hard on improving the clock performance and power consumption on the new revision of G80 chips, which are going to be used for the spring refresh part."

So how exactly are they going to lower power consumption when all they did was boost the clocks? In my mind, if it says it's a new revision and power consumption is reduced, are we talking about a respin?

Either way, I'm a bit disappointed if this is the only refresh we're going to get until winter. I wanted to see GDDR4 and a die shrink.