Rob Beschizza
Gear

NVidia Nervous On 8800 Ultra NDAs

Nvidia’s 8800 Ultra video card, the answer to AMD’s latecoming Radeon HD 2900, won’t be available for at least a fortnight following its offical launch next week: The firm isn’t giving its hardware partners any boards until it’s satisfied that they won’t be leaked to reviewers before the expiration of a non-disclosure agreement. The short […]

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Nvidia's 8800 Ultra video card, the answer to AMD's latecoming Radeon HD 2900, won't be available for at least a fortnight following its offical launch next week: The firm isn't giving its hardware partners any boards until it's satisfied that they won't be leaked to reviewers before the expiration of a non-disclosure agreement.

The short answer to this begged question is that, ignoring the implication Nvidia doesn't trust the companies it does business with, it's nervous that the 8800 Ultra won't be competitive with the flagship 2900s. In fact, it may be possible to mod an 8800 GTX into one with little effort. The Inquirer offers details:

"The GPU is not clocked to 675MHz ... but rather a very conservative 612MHz, a 37MHz clock boost. ... (Memory Bandwidth) is still a couple of gigabytes short of upcoming Radeon HD 2900XT. Everything else remains the same as it was on the 8800GTX, and some partners suggest schematics how to create an 8800Ultra from a single 8800GTX board - an interesting turn of events indeed. Can you say... voltmod? "

Final 8800 Ultra specs disappoint [The Inquirer]