Installation

Installing the Ultra is pretty simple and I encountered no clearance issues on my motherboard. However, those with smaller cases may find it quite a tight fit as the card did overhang our test board by a good inch.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Testing

Testing for graphics cards involves running several synthetic and gaming benchmarks to determine the cards performance in different environments. We then overclock the card as far as it will go and then compare it's scores to not only the stock ones, but from other cards we have recently reviewed using the same test setup.

The software we used to test the 8800 Ultra 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
Silver Power 600w
BFG PhysX card with custom cooler
Auzentech Prelude

Overclocking

Overclocking of the 8800 Ultra didn't go quite as well as I hoped. Even with some extra fans aimed at it I was only able to raise the core from 612mhz to 660mhz and the memory from 1080mhz to 1160mhz. This different however is not that noticeable in the scores and we can put this down to the PC being largely CPU limited with this kind of graphical power.