The world’s largest supplier of discrete graphics processing units (GPUs), Nvidia Corp., on Wednesday said it would start to sell its new high-end graphics product by the 15^th of May at unprecedented cost of $829 per graphics card. Even though the release allows Nvidia to claim the world’s fastest graphics card, its price may keep the vast majority of end-users away from it.

Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra comes with 128 stream processors, 32 texture mapping units, 24 raster operation units and 384-bit memory bus. The “base” clock-speed of the processor is 612MHz, a 6% increase over previous flagship offering, while the 128 unified shader processors operate at 1500MHz, which is 11% higher compared to the GeForce 8800 GTX. Nvidia equips the GeForce 8800 Ultra with 768MB of GDDR3 memory at 2160MHz, a 20% memory bandwidth boost compared to the predecessor. The GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards will use new “A3” revision of the G80 graphics processor, which is believed to have high overclocking potential.

“The graphics industry evolves extremely quickly and it is quite an achievement when you can leapfrog your own performance milestones in succession like we have done with these GeForce 8 Series GPUs,” said Ujesh Desai, general manager of desktop graphics processors at Nvidia.

According to Nvidia itself, performance advantage that the GeForce 8800 Ultra has compared to its predecessor, Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX, is between 10% and 15%. According to X-bit labs’ performance preview of emulated GeForce 8800 Ultra, the newcomer has 2% - 14% performance increase compared to the slower model. Nvidia claims that in some applications the 8800 Ultra may be 27% faster than the 8800 GTX.

The new GeForce 8800 Ultra product is fully compatible with DirectX 10 and features the same list of capabilities as other GeForce 8800-series graphics cards, including PureVideo HD, coverage sampling antialiasing and so on.

Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra-based graphics cards will be available at e-tailers and retailers worldwide by May 15^th. Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card launch partners include Asustek Computer, BFG, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision, Leadtek, MSI, PNY, Point of View, Sparkle and XFX. Prices range from $829 in the U.S. and higher. In France the board will cost €829 (approximately $1127) and higher, whereas in Germany it will be priced at €699 (approximately $950) and higher. Official price in the UK and other countries is currently unclear, but Overclockers.co.uk online store offers to pre-order one GeForce 8800 Ultra board for £528.74 (approximately $1051) with taxes included.

To date, the highest manufacturer suggested retail price for an advanced graphics card has been $649. Given that the GeForce 8800 GTX still has MSRP of $599 - $649, it is unclear why Nvidia increased the price by 33% amid 10% - 15% performance boost. It also remains to be seen whether end-users will really buy a significant amount of graphics cards at the price of an office personal computer.