NVIDIA gives away signed GeForce 8800 Ultra – the first CUDA-enabled GPU

As part of the GeForce Greats event, NVIDIA is giving away a GeForce 8800 Ultra GPU signed by the company’s CEO, Jensen Huang. This follows on from yesterday’s announcement that NVIDIA will be giving away the GeForce 256, the company’s first officially released GPU. With the GeForce 8800 Ultra, NVIDIA presents another piece of technology history to be raffled off on Platform X (formerly Twitter).

The role of the GeForce 8800 Ultra in GPU development

The GeForce 8800 Ultra, released in 2007, is considered one of the first GPUs with CUDA support, enabling developers to build GPU-based applications beyond just graphics rendering. CUDA, the parallel computing platform developed by NVIDIA, was originally introduced with the GeForce 8800 GTX, which was launched in 2006. The GeForce 8800 Ultra is an evolution of this design. The GPU is based on the G80 architecture and offered features such as DirectX 10 support at the time of its release. With 128 CUDA cores, a clock speed of 612 MHz and 768 MB of GDDR3 memory connected via a 384-bit interface, the 8800 Ultra was a model aimed at ambitious users and developers who wanted to focus on new types of applications with high computing power.

Participation in the prize draw

To take part in the prize draw for the GeForce 8800 Ultra, interested parties must comment under a corresponding post on the official NVIDIA-GeForce account on X with the hashtag #GeForceGreats. The prize draw for this GPU is part of a series of promotions in which a total of four GPUs will be given away, which, according to NVIDIA, have played a special role in the development of graphics hardware. The GeForce 8800 Ultra is not part of the previously unveiled Mystery Boxes that will be distributed during the event. One of these boxes, the so-called Diablo Mystery Box, for example, contained a signed GeForce 256. The announcement of further GPUs as part of the raffle is planned for the next few days.

Technological heritage of the GeForce 8800 Ultra

The GeForce 8800 Ultra played an important role in establishing GPUs not only as hardware for graphics output, but also as platforms for general computing tasks. Functions such as CUDA laid the foundation for many applications that today go far beyond the gaming sector. These include scientific calculations, simulations and machine learning. While the GeForce 8800 Ultra was technically the second CUDA GPU after the GeForce 8800 GTX, it marks a transition to more powerful hardware with better support for modern interfaces and applications. The raffle of the signed GeForce 8800 Ultra gives interested parties the opportunity to win a piece of hardware that has played an important role in GPU development. At the same time, this promotion shows how NVIDIA is honoring the company’s technological past with the GeForce Greats event. For collectors and technology enthusiasts, this is a rare opportunity to obtain a signed GPU from a formative period in computer graphics. Over the next few days, NVIDIA will unveil more GPUs as part of the event. According to the company, each of these cards will represent specific milestones in the development of GeForce products. Those interested can follow the GeForce account posts on X to learn more about the upcoming giveaways.

Source: NVIDIA GeForce