Introduction
It's been three weeks since the launch of NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 Ultra GPU. Analysis showed it to be a supremely competent next generation GPU, able to accelerate anything thrown at it to hitherto unseen levels of performance, eclipsing the then current performance leader, ATI's Radeon 9800XT.Since then rumours have been rife, concentrating on ATI's new GPU and also a mysterious 'Extreme' 6800 Ultra, clocked a fair bit higher than the original, to take on whatever ATI was going to reply with.
ATI's reply is now here and NVIDIA are going to need that Extreme if they want the speed crown back, having only held it for these scant three weeks.
There's nothing like giving the game away on the first page, but there's also no point beating around the bush. X800 XT is all kinds of fast, arriving at that speed using roughly the same methods as 6800 Ultra. It's a GPU of epic performance proportions. Consumer graphics is about to get one hell of a kick up the arse when both GPUs hit retail.
We've seen the angry, green Californian way to performance nirvana, now it's time for the calm, red Canadian approach.
