Gainward
PowerPack! Ultra/2100 Geforce 6800 Golden Sample 128MB Review - Page 1 of 7
By John Grabski - September 27, 2004
INTRODUCTION
Many gamers will usually point out their video card first when describing their
system, as it is usually among the flashiest pieces of hardware, is one of the
main components of the system, and is usually a good conversation piece. They
used to be ordinary green pcb's, lucky to have the manufacturer's stamp on the
gpu. Now, cards feature extravagant heatsink designs, large fan setups, lights....
Some even have LED temperature indicators. Obviously IHV's have taken notice of
gamers' enthusiasm for the video card, and have turned it into quite a flashy
business, replete with full-page Rolling Stone advertisements and daring
packaging designs.
The subject of this review is definitely a flashy video card in many ways, the
Gainward PowerPack! Ultra/2100 Geforce 6800 Golden Sample 128mb. Those familiar
with Gainward are probably used to the long naming scheme, as this is something
they've stuck with for years. The company was founded in 1984, and enjoyed
success in the early 3D accelerator days using the CARDEXpert name. Around the
time of Geforce2, Gainward implemented the industry's first "Overclocked out of
the box" line of cards, the Golden Sample line. Using hand-picked components,
this line of cards features higher-than-normal clockspeeds, and a robust
non-reference pcb design built to take the heat from the higher speeds.
Yes, that's right, I said "non-reference" (and don't forget, I also said
"higher-than-normal clockspeeds"). This card is the first I've seen to deviate
from the reference design. It also features a radical 2-slot cooling design
(only available in the European/Asian version, the US version uses a single-slot
method), only making this card even more attractive given its price point ($299
USD).
For those of you unfamiliar with the Geforce 6800 feature
set, here's a quick and dirty...
SPECIFICATIONS
NVIDIA CineFX 3.0 Engine
3 Quad (12-Pixel Pipeline) Design
325MHz Core Clock
700MHz Memory Clock
128MB 2.8ns DDR Memory
25.6 GB/s Memory Bandwidth
AGP 8X Bus (4X and 2X Compatible)
DirectX 9.0C and OpenGL 1.5 (2.0) Compliant
VGA, DVI, and S-Video Out
Forceware Graphics Drivers
Gainward has deviated from these original specifications by shipping a card
with a default core speed of 350MHz, and a default effective memory speed of
800MHz, using 2.5ns chips instead of the slower 2.8 modules.
Here's a breakdown of some of the new features brought forth by the new
Gefore 6800 family:
The addition of SM3.0 (enabled through the CineFX Engine) capable silicon
brings developer friendly shader capabilities with minimal performance loss
(please refer to Far Cry 1.2)
256 bit memory interface absolutely helps powerful cards like this with
higher levels of Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering at much higher
resolutions than any 128 bit memory interface card ever could
The new Rotated Grid Array Antialiasing (Part of the new Intellisample 3.0
specification) provides superior image quality vs. the previous generation
of nVidia cards
Displacement Mapping will allow for true vertex shader tricks without
bump-mapping workarounds, allowing for great lighting effects
Full Pixel Branching Support allows for use of long shaders, beneficial for
developers, and in the long run, the end customer
UltraShadow II, though not quite embraced by the developer community at this
point, is an nVidia proprietary feature that optimizes the shadow creation
process, accelerates the crucial areas of shadows, and gives the end user a
more complete than ever view of lighting/shadow capabilities on today's
gaming hardware
Enhanced codec decode support (specifically MPEG-2) increases the card's
usability when working with video media files, and the addition of motion
estimation will allow for higher quality video at comparable or lower
bitrates
Digital Vibrance remains as an attractive feature of the Geforce series,
allowing for a huge level of color adjustability in games and on the desktop
At the $299 price point, the Geforce 6800 Non-Ultra cards have no direct
competition, as the ATI X800 Pro (their lowest hi-end card) occupies the $399
price bracket. Rumor has it that ATI's X700 series may be coming soon to battle
the 6800NU on store shelves. Possessing the same feature set as its bigger
brothers makes this card an attractive buy, even though the slower memory and
lack of one quad unit and vertex shader make for slightly lower performance.
