XFX 8800 Ultra "Extreme" Edition
Game Benchmarks - CoD 2, F.E.A.R. and Oblivion
Published: 25th October 2007 | Source: XFX | Price: £440 |
Call of Duty 2
Call of Duty 2 is a fairly recent game that uses a lot of DirectX 9.0c features, including real time shadows, amazing smoke effects and some nice looking HDR effects. This makes the game very taxing at these high resolutions. I played a fully patched up version of the game. Once again I played through the game with a two minute gaming session including explosions, smoke and also lots of snow.
Taken that these are top-end cards, they should all do well here.

Call of Duty 2 is a fairly recent game that uses a lot of DirectX 9.0c features, including real time shadows, amazing smoke effects and some nice looking HDR effects. This makes the game very taxing at these high resolutions. I played a fully patched up version of the game. Once again I played through the game with a two minute gaming session including explosions, smoke and also lots of snow.
Taken that these are top-end cards, they should all do well here.

The XFX card just edges Call of Duty 2 above the Gainward Ultra, perhaps showing that the cards are performing about as well as the game engine can scale to at this resolution and detail level.
F.E.A.R.
F.E.A.R. is a game based on an engine that uses many features of DirectX 9.0c. It has volumetric lighting, soft shadows, parallax mapping and particle effects, with a slow-motion mode that really taxes today's top of the line GPU's. I fully patched version the game with the latest patch. I played three two-minute runs on a taxing part of the game with plenty of action, using slow-motion for the full time whilst firing at enemy soldiers and using grenades that produce a cool "blast" contortion effect when blown up.
F.E.A.R. looked stunning at this level of detail and resolution, but what do our numbers say?

F.E.A.R.
F.E.A.R. is a game based on an engine that uses many features of DirectX 9.0c. It has volumetric lighting, soft shadows, parallax mapping and particle effects, with a slow-motion mode that really taxes today's top of the line GPU's. I fully patched version the game with the latest patch. I played three two-minute runs on a taxing part of the game with plenty of action, using slow-motion for the full time whilst firing at enemy soldiers and using grenades that produce a cool "blast" contortion effect when blown up.
F.E.A.R. looked stunning at this level of detail and resolution, but what do our numbers say?

Here the XFX Ultra really steals the march on the other cards, although the XFX 8800 GTS Fatal1ty is still pretty close.
Oblivion
Oblivion is an awesome RPG with a simply huge immersive environment, great graphics and incredibly realistic scenery. This game is currently one of the most testing games that you can buy and it is certainly a test of the high-end cards here. I chose to do a run-through of the Arena part of the game. I spoke to a character, did some magic whilst in a fight and fought in the arena that is pretty huge. Also as well as doing this test I took a wander around to make sure that the benchmark resembled the general gameplay with each card.
Settings used are below:

And the figures say:
Oblivion
Oblivion is an awesome RPG with a simply huge immersive environment, great graphics and incredibly realistic scenery. This game is currently one of the most testing games that you can buy and it is certainly a test of the high-end cards here. I chose to do a run-through of the Arena part of the game. I spoke to a character, did some magic whilst in a fight and fought in the arena that is pretty huge. Also as well as doing this test I took a wander around to make sure that the benchmark resembled the general gameplay with each card.
Settings used are below:

And the figures say:
Most Recent Comments
Nice review niceeee card.. bit too higher price for me tho...
New cards hitting the shelves next week? is this the 8800GTQuote
New cards hitting the shelves next week? is this the 8800GTQuote
Great read.
Still don`t like 2 slot gfx approach, but also appreciate the existing situation with that generation, and the cooler is proven.
Nice bundle imo, looked like both GRAW and the Lost Planet will give u something to thrash at immediately. Don`t know what else u would want in a bundle aside from tat.
Don`t like the price, especially with the very good alternatives about.
A little bemused with the release timing too tbh, seeing as XFX do have a number of already great 8800 options out there, but maybe this will be their consolidation card moving forward for the older 8800 models. Knowing perhaps that there isn`t a big enough performance gap between the 8800s about to come out and the existing GTX cards, this could be a reason for them to push this Ultra as far as they can.
Don`t think it`s a good option at this time, imo. Nice overall package, be excellent if it were cheaper - c`mon u`ve made u`r monies out of this range by now.Quote
Still don`t like 2 slot gfx approach, but also appreciate the existing situation with that generation, and the cooler is proven.
Nice bundle imo, looked like both GRAW and the Lost Planet will give u something to thrash at immediately. Don`t know what else u would want in a bundle aside from tat.
Don`t like the price, especially with the very good alternatives about.
A little bemused with the release timing too tbh, seeing as XFX do have a number of already great 8800 options out there, but maybe this will be their consolidation card moving forward for the older 8800 models. Knowing perhaps that there isn`t a big enough performance gap between the 8800s about to come out and the existing GTX cards, this could be a reason for them to push this Ultra as far as they can.
Don`t think it`s a good option at this time, imo. Nice overall package, be excellent if it were cheaper - c`mon u`ve made u`r monies out of this range by now.Quote
I dont think the clock speed boost on that ultra over a normal ultra are enough to justify buying it, if it was 100mhz then yeh, but it isnt.Quote
Would love to have 2 of these in my rig...if only to massage my 3DMark scores in an upward direction.Quote