NVIDIA launches GeForce 8800 Ultra

Quickly following last month's news of the GeForce 8600, NVIDIA today unveiled the GeForce 8800 Ultra as the new flagship in its video card line. The official release confirms earlier specs with higher clock speeds across the board compared to the earlier 8800 GTX. Memory speed jumps the most from 1.8 to 2.16GHz for extra bandwidth; the internal shader processors also step up from 1350MHz to 1500MHz while the core increases from 575MHz to 612MHz. The increases mean a performance boost of about 10 to 15 percent compared to the earlier top-end card, NVIDIA says.

Card makers included in the launch will be ASUS, BFG, eVGA, and several other board manufacturers. The 8800 Ultra will come with 768MB of memory in every version and will ship on May 15th, with cards commanding a premium at prices beginning at $829 versus the $600 or less for GTX cards.