Conclusions
What's there to say that hasn't been said? The GeForce 8800 Ultra's clock speeds are a little bit higher than the 8800 GTX's, and as a result, it performs somewhat better. That's more than sufficient to make this the new Fastest Single Video Card on the Planet. Perhaps the best thing one could say for the Ultra is that Nvidia didn't blunt the GTX's virtues—which include gorgeous image quality, fairly reasonable power draw numbers, and whisper-silent cooling—in order to get more performance.

I also prefer the Ultra to the option of running two GeForce 8800 GTS cards in SLI, for a variety of reasons. The 8800 GTS SLI config we tested was faster than the Ultra in some cases, but it was slower in others. Two cards take up more space, draw more power, and generate more heat, but that's not the worst of it. SLI's ability to work with the game of the moment has always been contingent on driver updates and user profiles, which is in itself a disadvantage, but SLI support has taken a serious hit in the transition to Windows Vista. We found that SLI didn't scale well in either Half-Life 2: Episode One or Supreme Commander, and these aren't minor game titles. I was also surprised to have to reboot in order to switch into SLI mode, since Nvidia fixed that issue in its Windows XP drivers long ago. Obviously, Nvidia has higher priorities right now on the Vista driver front, but that's just the problem. SLI likely won't get proper attention until Nvidia addresses its other deficits compared to AMD's Catalyst drivers for Vista, including an incomplete control panel UI, weak overclocking tools, and some general functionality issues like the Oblivion AA problem we encountered.

The holder of the graphics performance crown is rarely available for $88.88 at Wal-Mart, but the Ultra's value proposition is more suspect than usual for a top-end part—not because it breaks new ground in graphics card pricing, which it does, but because there are GTX cards already available with strikingly similar clock speeds for about $200 less. That fact tarnishes the performance crown this card wears, in my view. I expect the Ultra to make more sense as a flagship product once we see—if we see—"overclocked in the box" versions offering some nice clock speed boosts above the stock specs. GeForce 8800 Ultra cards may never be killer values, but at least then they might justifiably command their price premiums.

We'll be keeping an eye on this issue and hope to test some faster-clocked Ultras soon.

When we do, we may be testing them alongside the Ultra's intended prey, cards based on AMD's upcoming R600 GPU. Stay tuned.