PNY's Overclocked Ultra 8800 To PWN Competition?

As if the newly-maxed out version of NVidia's 8800 GTX wasn't enough, gaming gearmaker PNY decided to overclock the Ultra just a little bit more, increasing the core clock from 612 to 648MHz, the shader clock from 1500 to 1512MHz and its memory frequency from 2.16 GHz to 2.24 GHz.

Performance from the XLR8 GeForce 8800 Ultra OC won't be radically superior to the standard model, but the price increase isn't either: another $50 on top of the "normal" $800 tag. If you're spending that much on a video card to begin with, why the hell not? We're deep into "if you have to ask" territory here, and in more ways than mere price.

Press release follows after the jump.

PARSIPPANY, N.J. – May 24, 2007 – PNY Technologies®, Inc. today announced the addition of two, new XLR8(TM) graphics cards based on the NVIDIA® GeForce® 8 Series of GPUs. The XLR8 GeForce 8800 Ultra and 8800 Ultra OC (Overclocked) round out PNY's graphics card line up, so gamers have more choices to select a high-end card based on their particular needs and budget.

"These cards push the limits of graphics performance featuring the best-in-class technological advancements from NVIDIA,” said Nicholas Mauro, senior marketing manager for PNY Technologies consumer graphics cards and memory. "As new GPUs are introduced, PNY will continue to offer a breadth of product families to meet all levels of gamers no matter how extreme that may be.”

• XLR8 GeForce 8800 Ultra by PNY Technologies – Features 768MB of high-speed GDDR3 frame buffer memory and a 612 MHz core clock. The card also offers a shader clock of 1500 MHz; a memory frequency of 2.16 GHz providing a memory bandwidth of 103.7 GB/sec.; and a fill rate of 39.2 billion pixels/sec. The card is available now from PNY.com and from online retailers beginning in June for an MSRP of $799.99.

• XLR8 GeForce 8800 Ultra OC by PNY Technologies – Features 768MB of high-speed GDDR3 frame buffer memory and a 648 MHz core clock. The card also offers a shader clock of 1512 MHz; a memory frequency of 2.24 GHz providing a memory bandwidth of 107.4 GB/sec.; and a fill rate of 41.4 billion pixels/sec. The card will be available in June from online retailers for an MSRP of $849.99 and from PNY.com.

As with previous XLR8 8800 models, the cards fully support Microsoft® DirectX® 9 (DX9) and DirectX 10 (DX10) for current and next-generation PC gaming. PNY's XLR8 GeForce 8800 Ultra and 8800 Ultra OC run with the PCI Express® bus architecture and supports NVIDIA SLI(TM) technology for up to 2x the performance of a single graphics card. Outputs include two dual link DVI-I connectors + HDTV/S-Video.

Other features that come with all of PNY's GeForce 8 series of graphics cards include:
• NVIDIA® unified architecture with GigaThread(TM) technology
• Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10 Shader Model 4.0 support
• 16x full-screen anti-aliasing
• True 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting
• NVIDIA® Quantum Effects(TM) physics processing technology
• HDCP Capable
• NVIDIA® PureVideo(TM) HD technology*
• OpenGL® 2.0 support
• NVIDIA® ForceWare® Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
• Dual-link DVI-I outputs support 2560x1600 resolution displays (at 60Hz)
• Built for Microsoft Windows Vista(TM) Premium

PNY offers a five-year warranty (three year standard with two-year upgrade upon completion of registration form on PNY Web site within 6 months from original date of purchase) and toll free tech support at 1-888-316-1193.

PNY Technologies also offers hi-speed XLR8 memory upgrade modules for gaming. For more information on product bundles, technical product support, FAQs and the latest up-to-date drivers, please visit PNY's Web site at http://www.pny.com.

* Feature requires supported video software. Currently only available on Microsoft Windows Vista. Visit www.nvidia.com for upcoming Windows XP driver support.