INTRODUCTION
The NVIDIA GeForce 6800 product line (6800, 6800 GT and 6800 Ultra) should be
very familiar to most everyone by now. A quick summary is that the 6800 Ultra
and the 6800 GT are both 16 pipeline cards with 256MB of memory and are in the
$500~$400 price range respectively. The 6800 is a 12 pipeline/128MB part which results in a
more affordable option at or below $300 (not to mention being much easier to get
your hands on in recent months).
In this review I'll focus on how the
Inno3D GeForce 6800
compares to a GeForce 6800 Ultra. The 6800's four fewer pipelines and half the
memory than that of the Ultra reduce both its fillrate and bandwidth. I'll not
fight this fact but rather will examine how the 6800 can be equivalent to the
Ultra in performance (in terms of frames per second and percentage hit) albeit at obviously
different resolution, anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings.
If you are a gamer (or know one) with a sub-$300
video card budget and don't mind gaming at 1024x768 (with some less aggressive
anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings) then this review is for you.
SPECIFICATIONS
128 / 256MB 256-bit DDR Memory
Superscalar 16-pipe GPU Architecture
0.13 Micron Process Technology
High-Speed 256-bit DDR Memory Interface with Advanced
Memory Control
Inno3D GeForce 6800 @ default clocks (325/700) and overclocked (345/750)
BIOS Settings
Memory Timings 2-3-3-5
200MHz Front Side Bus
Synthetic Benchmarks
3DMark03 Build 340
Aquamark3
Games Tested
Doom 3 - v1.0.1262 - High Quality
Unreal Tournament 2004 - v3270 - All settings maxed out
Rome: Total War Demo - All settings maxed out
Colin McRae Rally 2005 Demo - All settings maxed out
OVERCLOCKING Some recent reviews of this card claim to have reached overclocked speeds of
380/800. I was unable to even approach this with 345/750 being the highest 100%
stable setup across all of the games and synthetics used to benchmark in this
review. Overclocking made very little or no difference in some situations so
those results are not included.
