Gigabyte's GeForce 6800GT and GeForce 6800

Introduction

Introduction

In the High-end sector of AGP graphic accelerators, a relative calm has established. The hottest battles are still on the PCI-E front where both companies - NVIDIA and ATI - are releasing more and more products thus gradually covering the whole spectrum of price niches, from the value solutions up to the top-end novelties.

We have already covered the situation in the mainstream AGP sector in our review NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT Roundup. Round II: AGP and soon we are presenting a very interesting GeForce 6600 board equipped with the transition bridge HSI, because this product at its all specifications is having pretensions for undisputable leadership in its price category and promises to be quite a lucky buy. But let's better not run ahead and get back to the cards in question.

We have already given a detailed coverage of solutions based on GeForce 6800GT and GeForce 6800 by varied manufacturers. Anyway, the two video cards made by Gigabyte taking part in our today's review stand out among most cards made on the above chips, so we can't help devoting a separate material to them. There used to be time when manufacturers received ready-made boards from NVIDIA itself and when the identity of a card as belonging to a certain product line could be established by the sticker on the cooling system only. Nowadays, as the market is coming to its saturation (in fact, Ultra top-end cards are anyway in shortage) the assortment has proved more varied, and along with producing "an army of clones" of reference boards" the manufacturers are trying to stand out with their own proprietary solutions.

The boards in question today stand out with their cooling systems. Gigabyte has not feared to fit a fully passive cooling system on GeForce 6800, so during the tests we'll find out how effective the novelty proved.

Situation with GeForce 6800GT where the fan with illumination is fitted on the board's reverse side is more interesting. That is, it's eternal problem of users who have ATX housings - they pay for a nice illumination which is normally not seen much and in this case it is missing completely.

The design of the cooling system based on heat-pipes merits the most fixed attention, but we'll talk about that while describing the cards.

As you see, the investigation is going to be quite interesting as it always should be when we talk about nonstandard products - we really are bored with reference products, we (the buyers) want not only the practical advantage of owning a high-end video card but also a pure aesthetic pleasure. And of course we'll be covering the overclockers' niceties like unlocking the pipelines on GeForce 6800, as well as the overclocking capabilities of each of the cards in detail.

As the contender for benchmarking we chose a board on the vase of Radeon X800 PRO that runs at standard frequencies 475/900 MHz. Let's take a closer look at our today's heroes.

Gigabyte GeForce 6800GT

First off, the design of the box with a cool monster from DOOM3 shown off catches the eye. Recall the recently reviewed Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT PCI-E - the box for it was made in similar style "Special for DOOM3". Sure, the monsters on the box is far not all what it offers - inside you will find another cool bonus for DOOM fanciers who are still faithful to the AGP, that is, a complete version of the game, and a lot of other useful niceties:

• GeForce 6800GT video card;
• DVI/ 15-pin D-Sub and S-Video/RCA adapters;
• a drivers and utilities CD;
• User's manual;
• DOOM3 in 3 CDs;
• Power supply splitter.

Let's look at the board. It is made on blue textolyte, in all the other respects it is a complete replica of the reference design, so we'd better move on to the most interesting part - the cooling system.

Technically, the design is a pair of separate aluminum radiators. Heat is transferred with a couple of heat pipes that effectively sink the heat from the GPU over to the reverse side of the board through copper plates. Therefore, the radiator on the board's front side cools only the video memory chips. As we already mentioned, the fan is equipped with a blue illumination.

There is a definite plus in that due to "releasing" the board's front side from massive active cooling and relocation of the main radiator to the board's reverse side, the PCI slots starting with the second remain fully accessible.

The card offers 256Mb of GDDR3 video memory with a 256-bit data transmission bus, with the memory assembled of eight Samsung BGA memory chips of 2 ns access time, which is equivalent to 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR) and is fully equivalent to the standard video memory operation speed, according to the official specifications. All the eight video memory chips are positioned over the left-hand side of the board and are cooled by the above radiator.

The GPU of GeForce 6800 GT (NV40) is made on the 37th week of year 2004 and has revision А1. The frequency of the chip does not differ frm those announced for boards on the base of GeForce 6800GT and amounts to 350 MHz.

The card is equipped with a connector for additional power supply, a standard set of outputs (analogous, digital, and TV-OUT), and under the additional radiator there are hidden integrated stabilizers in BGA-housings part of which, as you see, are not soldered, unlike GeForce 6800Ultra cards.

GeForce 6800 Features

The box is made in the standard style of Gigabyte, with the package bundle including:

• GeForce 6800 video card;
• DVI/15-pin D-Sub and S-Video/RCA adapters
• a drivers and utilities CD;
• User's manual;
• SpellForce: The Order of Dawn;
• Thief: Deadly Shadows;
• Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising
• PowerDVD 5.0 + VTuner II Plus.

Since the board itself doesn't make a difference from the reference besides the color of the textolyte, let's move on to examining the cooling system. It differs from the previous GeForce 6800GT-based model only in that it lacks a fan on the reverse side of the board, - the cooling is fully passive! The major advantage of such a cooling system is its quiet operation, which is increasingly an issue among consumers these days.

The card offers 128 Mb of memory with a 256-bit data transmission bus, assembled of eight Hynix BGA memory chips of 2.8 ns access time, which is equivalent to 357 MHz (714 MHz DDR) operating frequency. With Gigabyte GeForce 6800, the memory runs as it should be at 350MHz (700MHz DDR).

The GPU of GeForce 6800 (NV40) was made on the 37th week of year 2004, has revision А1 and runs at 325 MHz. The number of pixel/vertex units is originally 12/5, but we will certainly try to change this formula to a more attractive.

The board is equipped with an additional power connector and a standard set of outputs.

Now let's talk about the pipelines. Using Riva Tuner of the most recent version we were able to unlock them completely, so we ran all the tests not only with standard 12х1/5 VP but with 16х1/6VP to achieve a noticeable performance boost.

Test configuration

For benchmarking NVIDIA cards we used ForceWare 71.80 in its latest beta version, and Catalyst 5.1 WHQL - for ATI video cards.

Synthetic benchmarks

Gaming benchmarks

OpenGL tests

Final Words

Gigabyte GeForce 6800GT

Since we have already examined overclocking for solutions based on GeForce 6800GT and there is a lot of feedback from owners of these cards, we can already make up some statistics which says that at overclocking the Gigabyte GeForce 6800GT is an excellent model. Few GT models are able running at 415/1145 MHz (higher than in GeForce 6800Ultra!). But in the end, all depends on a particular video card specimen.

Again, note the very smart and interesting design of the cooling system which will especially appeal to modders.

Another advantage is the rich package bundle in which a complete version of DOOM3 is included. The only issue that may come up with Gigabyte GeForce 6800GT is the installation of the video card together with a Zalman 7000 cooler on some (!!!) motherboards, e.g. on MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum. Because of the specific wiring of the motherboard, the cooling system and Zalman installed on top of the CPU may be of hindrance to one another.

As to the price, it is currently about $470-$500. At the same time, Gigabyte GeForce 6800GT performed very well compared to Х800 PRO, which especially applies to aggressive quality settings at increased resolutions. For all these advantages, Gigabyte GeForce 6800GT deserves our "Editor's Choice".

Gigabyte GeForce 6800

Of course, the first thing to mention is the successful experiment on unlocking the pipelines. The card easily started up at activated 16х1/6 VP. This fact is especially nice when comparing the card's performance before and after the unlocking.

Needless to say, we can't guarantee that you will get 16/6 for sure if you buy a similar model of the card. We are talking about our particular specimen. Of note is also the good overclocking potential (390/780 MHz), and we especially stress out a complete lack of noise during operation - the cooling system of the card fully does the job. To date, the price of the solution is about 340$.

In the upshot:

Products by Gigabyte covered in this material are a perfect option for upgrading the video card to date - it is a good combination of performance worth of high-end level, attractive (very smart!) exterior, good overclocking capability, and a rich package bundle.

Owners of AGP systems can stay calm for now - video cards of the GeForce 6800 class (and even more than that - 6800GT) provide the top-most performance in modern games.