OGS: GeForce 8800 Ultra Overclocking Records in 3DMark

Back in its day, the GeForce 8800 Ultra was the ultimate graphics card for high-end gamers. What's more, the launch of NVIDIA's 9000 series didn't really change much; the GeForce 9800 GTX turned out to be just a cheaper, optimized version of the GeForce 8800, offering no significant advantage. In fact, in some games and applications, the GeForce 9800 GTX even lagged behind the 8800 Ultra.

However, the GeForce 8800 Ultra also had its downsides, and pretty significant ones at that. Almost all 8000 series cards suffered from "GPU detachment." This referred to a graphics processor failure, often involving the GPU die detaching from its substrate, not the entire GPU from the board itself. This made repairs resource-intensive, as it required purchasing a new graphics chip. For a hot, high-end 180-watt solution, GPU detachment was practically an inevitable outcome.

So why am I bringing this up, you might ask? It's simple: I'm simply amazed that almost 14 years after its launch, there are still GeForce 8800 Ultra cards out there that not only work flawlessly at stock speeds but can also be pushed to impressive frequencies.

Greek enthusiast OGS managed to get his hands on one such long-lived card and used it to set three new records for the model:

In the 3DMark03 benchmark, the GeForce 8800 Ultra was overclocked to 1000MHz GPU/2484MHz Shader / 2480MHz GDDR3. The result was 77057 points:

Next, the overclocker moved on to 3DMark05. Here, the graphics card was again overclocked to 1000MHz GPU/2484MHz Shader / 2480MHz GDDR3, achieving 43431 points:

Finally, in the most demanding benchmark of this session, 3DMark06, the card ran at 1000MHz GPU/2430MHz Shader / 2480MHz GDDR3. The score was 27127 points:

The enthusiast's test bench consisted of the following components:

Processor - Intel Core i9-9900K, overclocked with liquid nitrogen to frequencies between 7100 and 7200MHz depending on the benchmark
Motherboard - ASUS ROG Maximus XI Gene
Graphics Card - Reference NVIDIA GeForce 8800 ULTRA

Source: OGS's profile on HWBot