8800Ultra
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AMD's Radeon HD 3870 X2 launched, benchmarked and back in the race
Holy Teraflops gamers, AMD just launched the Radeon HD 3870 X2. Their new flagship card previously known by its R680 codename features a pair of RV670 GPUs with CrossFireX built-in to a single card. According to HotHardware's performance testing, The 3870 X2 was "usually the highest performing single-card in the group." Yes, that group includes the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX. Here's the rub though, according to HotHardWare: the X2's performance is determined by how well the card's drivers scale in a particular game -- a new game without appropriate support renders the card's performance to that of a single-GPU HD 3870. A problem initially demonstrated during their Crysis testing and later solved with a new set of AMD drivers. Still, as PCPer sums-up, the ~$449 3870 X2 meets or beats NVIDIA's best in today's most demanding DX9 and DX10 titles and should be on your "short list" if searching for the ultimate performance graphics card. Read -- PC Perspective Read -- Hot HardwareRead -- Press Release
NVIDIA's overclocked GeForce 8800 Ultra debuts
Really, it's hard for us to imagine sticking anything as loud and power hungry as the GeForce 8800 GTX into our precious desktop, no matter how great the latest games look on it, and we're having an even harder time envisioning NVIDIA's new 8800 Ultra anywhere near our motherboard. The new children-eating card starts at $829, and includes premium versions of the GTX's components, overclocked to fairly unreasonable degrees: a 612MHz core clock, 1500MHz shader clock and 1080MHz memory clock. Unfortunately, all that Ultra-ness only leads to a 10-15% performance increase, which isn't horrible, but hardly worth ditching your current 8800 GTX SLI setup for a couple of Ultras. But if that's not enough to dissuade you, or if you've been holding out for the best of the best from NVIDIA, you can pick one of these up around May 15th.
