Noise Level

We measured the level of noise produced by GeForce 8800 Ultra with a digital sound-level meter Velleman DVM1326 using A-curve weighing. At the time of our tests the level of ambient noise in our lab was 36dBA and the level of noise at a distance of 1 meter from a working testbed with a passively cooled graphics card inside was 43dBA. We got the following results:

Quite expectedly, the modified cooler is almost as noisy as the cooler of the GeForce 8800 GTX. The graphics card has comfortable noise characteristics despite its belonging to the Ultra High-End class.

An overclocked version of GeForce 8800 Ultra, like the XFX card we are describing here, may overheat and cause hang-ups in hot weather and in a poorly ventilated system case, so you should follow XFX’ recommendations on organizing proper airflows inside your computer. You also should not save on additional system fans. If these rules are complied with, the card will please you with its quiet and stable operation. And if you are going to overclock your GeForce 8800 Ultra, you will certainly need a more advanced cooling solution, perhaps a liquid cooling one.

Unfortunately, we could not measure the graphics card’s power consumption because it refused to run on our testbed based on an Intel Desktop Board D925XCV. Users of modern mainboards are unlikely to encounter this problem, yet you may want to make sure beforehand that the GeForce 8800 Ultra is compatible with your system before you make such an expensive purchase.