If you buy a 6800nu (non-ultra), do the firmware flash to unlock the pipelines and crank the core voltage up to 1.4v, you can get the thing very close to Ultra levels. It seems that the card is limited by it's voltage regulators, which no one makes powerful enough to handle both the core and memory at the same time. 325/900 to 405/1100 isn't a bad overclock. You need low-end watercooling, or high-end aircooling. I have a GT overlocked above Ultra levels, and it's absolutely smooth. Even in the subpen, it's always above 30fps. I once made the mistake of loading it on high-quality, 4x AA/4x AF, and could tell the hit in framerates. It never dipped below 30fps in the subpen (it wasn't it's usualy 37-35fps, though), and out on the open ocean it was holding 55fps (as opposed to it's normal +75 fps).
No reason to shell out for the 7800 on this game. However, it's absolutely worth it to shell out for a 3.8ghz AMD64 processor. Man this game eats up processing power like nothing else.
They should have made this game multi-threaded...
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