Geforce 6800

[town]

What do you chaps think of the Geforce 6800?
And can it be run in tandem - as a pair?

[GeForce]

Well there are several different versions: 6800 Ultra, 6800XT, 6800GS and 6800GT to name a few.

Most of them can be run as SLi (as a pair), but I would definitely recommend the GT/GS version - there is not a vast amount of difference between these two. Overall a great card, but go for the GT/GS versions.

Have a look at this page to compare core speed and memory frequency.

Jon

[kipman725]

THe AGP 6800 cannot be run in sli and if your going for PCI-E your money is better spent on a faster 7800gtx instead of two 6800gt's.

there are many versions of the 6800 which I will list from lowest performance upwards:
6800LE
6800SE (I think was only used by OEMS)
6800
6800gs
6800gt
6800ultra
6800ultra 512mb (Very rare)

the 6800le is very slightly slower than a 6600gt but has a greater potential for overclocking.

the sweet spot is the 6800gt as they can run at ultra speeds with minor tweeking and even if not overclocked are only slightly slower than the ultra.

If your considering a 6800 for pci-e I would recomend a 7800gt or gtx as although they may cost slightly more the performance and power consumption is much better.

[town]

What about radeon equivelants?

[GeForce]

THe AGP 6800 cannot be run in sli and if your going for PCI-E your money is better spent on a faster 7800gtx instead of two 6800gt's.

Oops yes. I assumed we were talking about PCI-E. My bad

As for the Ultra 512mb, you could also go for the first one on this page (PCI-e). 512MB GDDR3 RAM and at 485/1300mhz its gonna be fairly quick!

Jon

[kipman725]

512mb of graphics ram is pointless on all but the very fastest 7800/x1900 cards I would not recomend a 6800 with 512mb.

Btw that link is to a gs with 512mb which is slower than an ultra.

[ctjoyce]

First off, use http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=&card2= to compair cards, as it'll show you your cards preformance after you OC it.

Second off the ATi equivilant to the 6800 series are the X800XL, XT, XTPE, and the entiriety of the X850 series. Also the X1800XL is a nice $310 so that should be about the same as a 6800Ultra.

I would suggest saveing a bit, and looking into the 7800 series of cards or the X1800 series from ATi

Cheers
Cameron

[beefhole]

I'm running a 256m 6800GT and I absolutely love it-then again, I was running a 5200 before, so I my opinion may be a bit tainted by the jump in performance...

[Chris_F]

I'm running a 256m 6800GT and I absolutely love it-then again, I was running a 5200 before, so I my opinion may be a bit tainted by the jump in performance...

Small world.  I just got a 6800GS as an upgrade from an FX 5200.  Yes, BIG jump in performance.

[ctjoyce]

512mb of graphics ram is pointless on all but the very fastest 7800/x1900 cards I would not recomend a 6800 with 512mb.

I would. A 512MB card is faster and cheaper than a SLi setup. So if I had a, say, Dell and wanted to put SLi into it, but cant upgrade the MOBO as the Dell Windows wouln't work on it, I would throw a X1900XTX into it so that I could get SLi preformance without the hastle or cost of two 7800GTXs. Its the same with the 7800GTX 512mb

Btw that link is to a gs with 512mb which is slower than an ultra.

No its not buddy. Its 3DMark05 score is higher, and so are its game tests. The core clock may be slower, but in actuality its faster, and easily overclocked if you want the clock of the Ultra.

Cheers
Cameron

[kipman725]

gs has less pixel pipes than an ultra and slower clock speeds
it is slower by a considrable margin.

Gs:
Manufacturer      nVidia
Series      GeForce 6
GPU      NV42
Released      2005-11-07
Interface      PCI-E
Core Clock      425 MHz
Memory Clock      500 MHz (1000 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth      32 GB/sec
Shader Operations      5100 Operations/sec
Pixel Fill Rate      3400 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate      5100 MTexels/sec
Vertex Operations      637.5 MVertices/sec


Ultra:
Manufacturer      nVidia
Series      GeForce 6
GPU      NV45
Released      2004-06-28
Interface      PCI-E
Core Clock      400 MHz
Memory Clock      550 MHz (1100 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth      35.2 GB/sec
Shader Operations      6400 Operations/sec
Pixel Fill Rate      6400 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate      6400 MTexels/sec
Vertex Operations      600 MVertices/sec


notice that the actaul chips are different (42 for gs, 45 for ultra) this is because the number of enabled pipes in the gs is 12 compared to the ultras 16, thats why even at the same clock speeds as an ultra a gs can't match it.

As for 3dmark that uses huge textures which fill up graphics ram and so will be biased towards 512mb cards wheras games are designed (at the moment) for cards with less ram and so the extra pipes and slight clock speed advantage of the ultra make it alot faster in the real world.

[kipman725]

Double posted.

[ctjoyce]

gs has less pixel pipes than an ultra and slower clock speeds
it is slower by a considrable margin.

The pixel pipelines mabe, but that can easily be fixed, and your not going to notice the 50Mhz on the RAM and the 25Mhz on the core. It just wouln't matter.

As far as benching goes the two cards are withen 500 3DMarks of each other (after a BIOS flash on the GS to 12 Pixel pipelines) So in the real world thats 2FPS.

Now for how 3DMark works, your a bit mistaken. It dosnt fill your RAM, it creats textures that push your entire system to the limit. Much like FS does. Basically the animations, and complex 3D maps max out your GPU core, and not your GPU RAM. As you can see a regular card will bench about 7700 3DMarks, while the 512MB card benches 9200. Now the extra 1500 Marks is not influinced by the extra RAM that much. 700 Marks at most, the rest is all core clocks.

Cheers
Cameron

[town]

It seems there are a lot of opinions about which makes it quite difficult to pull the bones out of this one.

Now this is what I get when I download a spec sheet for a 6800XT

Graphics Core 256-bit
Memory Interface 256-bit
RAMDACs 400MHz
Memory Bandwidth 22.4 GB/sec.
Fill Rate 2.4 Billion Texels/sec.
Vertices Per Second 300 Million
Pixels per Clock (peak) 8
Clock rate 350 MHz
Memory Clock 1 GHz
Chipset 6800 XT
Memory 256 MB
Bus Type PCI-E
Memory Type DDR3
Memory Bus 256-bit
Highlighted Features HDTV ready,TV Out,SLI ready,Dual DVI Out

What does it all mean in laymans terms

[ctjoyce]

You are getting a good card with 256MB of memory, and it is SLi and HDTV ready.

Cheers
Cameron