Date: November 16th, 2004
Article by: Nathan Glentworth
(Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: Nvidia
<--SHOP FOR A NVIDIA 6800 GT PCI EXPRESS VIDEOCARD
PRODUCT COMPOSITION, PICTORIAL & WALKTHROUGH
All 6800GTs with 256Megs of onboard memory go for the price of around
US$380-$450 if you can find a PCI Express online. Seems that the PCI
Express flavor is taking its' sweet time getting into retail channels
and hopefully this will improve over the coming month with Christmas
coming.
The Nvidia reference sample I will be reviewing today
is loaded with 256Megs of actively cooled GDDR3 running at 500Mhz (1
Ghz DDR). It really doesn't matter what videocard manufacturer you purchase
from because most of them are all based on this exact card with maybe
slight changes in the cooling solution and monitor port configuration.
Some manufacturers have stuck with the exact videocard as you are seeing
here today right down to the fancy mermaid sticker on the cooler. Why
mess with what works.
The 6800GT tested today is quite a large card with about
an inch more added to the length when you are comparing it to the ATI
equivalent X800 pro and is long enough to block the system memory dimm
locking mechanism from disengaging with the card is installed. What
does this mean? Well, you will have to remove the card to remove your
memory from your motherboard. This is more the fault of the motherboard
manufacturer rather than videocard company. Although it wouldn't hurt
for Nvidia to take more advantage of the PCB they use and condense the
card size a bit.
The active VPU and memory cooling solution although quite
loud at startup will quite down considerably once you operating system
loads up and the software kicks in and starts monitoring and controlling
the fan speed. As a one slot cooling solution, this reference cooler
does an excellent job cooling the memory and the core and thus allowing
for stable gaming and a fun overclocking experience as you will see
later on in the review. What I like about this cooler is that everything
creating heat is cooled via heatsinks. No memory modules are lacking
cooling whatsoever. Even the voltage regulators on the right side of
the photo have heatsinks.
The turbine fan cooling the whole card is perfectly suited
and balanced for everything from desktop work to stress testing and
keeps the core temperature at a nice and cool at 59c while at idle and
only a mere 65c when overclocked and thrashing out some decent frame
rates while benchmarking. It is great that they removed the hair blower
associated with older models. Crazy cooling is just not required for
the NV40.
Seeing that this cooling solution is rather large and
heavy, the back side of the card has a reinforcement bracket on the
VPU core and six screws around the perimeter holding the heatsink in
place insuring that the heatsink has excellent contact with the memory
and core.
This particular sample came equipped with not only one,
but two DVI ports for native digital dual monitor support. In my mind
and experience, this is the only way videocards should come out of the
box today. If they are worried about standard analog VGA monitor support,
just throw two DVI to VGA convertors into the box. You can always go
from DVI to VGA, but you cannot go from VGA to DVI. Get my point?
Beside the DVI ports is the lone Video-out port for attaching
a TV or a projector as the monitor through a S-Video cable. Attach the
cable and go to the Nvidia drivers to set it up.
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