Testing

To test the 8800 Ultras, we put them through our usual lineup of benchmarks at different levels of anti-aliasing (AA) and Anistropic Filtering (AF) and at different resolutions.

The software we used to test the 8800 Ultras was as follows: 3Dmark06, 3Dmark05, 3Dmark03, FEAR built in benchmark, HL2: Lost Coast and X3 Reunion.

The settings used for all benchmarks were:

3Dmark0X: All 3Dmark tests were run at default settings.
FEAR: Both main settings at maximum. Both settings at max with resolution at 1600*1200.
HL2: Lost Coast: All settings at maximum with no AA or AF. All settings at max with 6xAA and 16xAF. Both at 1280*1024.
X3 Reunion: Settings at default. Full detail with 6xAA and 16AF at 1280*1024.

The drivers used for this review were the latest (at the time) ones from the nVidia website; 162.18.

All benchmarks were run 3 times and the average score of all results was used for the results.

The test setup used was as follows:

Conroe E6600 @ 3.156ghz
MSI P6N-Diamond
OCZ Flex PC2-6400
FSP 1000w
Auzentech Prelude

Overclocking

The 8800 Ultras were quite temperamental and got extremely hot when placed in SLI which made overclocking quite difficult. Therefore, to showcase how CPU limited these cards are I decided to change the CPU speed to see how that affected the 3Dmark06 score.