Great right up. Shame about the temp and noise however Zalman will hopefully come to the rescue on that one. Going to have to wait for AMDs reply until I decide whether to invest though.

I haven't run 3Dmark06 lately so maybe the new drivers are a factor, but the overall score that the GT puts up is almost exactly the same as my ultra... am I missing something???

I couldn't help but say WTF to myself when I saw the score!!!

Remember that the CPU is factored into the 3DMark06 score, so if your CPU is slower that will affect it. As will drivers of course. If you haven't run 3DMark06 in a while, there has been a lot of improvement in NVIDIA's drivers that you're probably not accounting for either.

It must be the drivers because everything else is =.

I'll try later and see/post what I get.

 

I was sort of surprised the card sounded a bit whiny to me and some of the other sites didn't notice. I, as did other sites, ran my tests on an open air bench but it was pretty warm in the lab one day during test and I heard the fan spin up a bit. Now, imagine putting the card in a hot case (don't imagine, I'll do it soon and let you know). I think things could get a little louder still but not to the point where its obtrusive.

I overlooked the fact that a quad core CPU was used in testing. My score with GFX @ stock is 12,465. While I find the 8800's to be very good cards, I have every intention of upgrading to Nvidias next flagship so I can run Crysis faster. Quite frankly I am disappointed with the framerate my card puts out in Crysis at high settings, but thankfully anticipated such circumstances and put $$$ aside for the next card.

 hows it run crysis?

 

jump ship on my gtx and sli two of them bad boys...  

 Meister, the Nvidia 9800 series are supposed to be announced around the middle of November so it might be worth bit of a wait on that one.

 I have read the review that Hot Hardware did on the 8800GT and was wondering how you benchmarked Crysis?  Did you use the Crysis Benchmark Tool?