Date:
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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GeForce 6800Ultra Preview

We test the reference GeForce 6800Ultra (NV40) comparing it to a GeForceFX 5950Ultra and an ATI Radeon 9800XT. We focus on pure gameplay performance and image quality.

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Dustbuster 2?

So the biggest question on everyone’s mind is does this thing sound like the GeForceFX 5800Ultra’s dustbuster? The quick answer to that is No. First of all the 5800Ultra’s HSF was heavy, this one is not; it's pure aluminum and very light. You won’t have to worry about this video card ripping your AGP port off.

Second, the fan has variable rotational speeds. When you first start your computer before the driver loads the fan will run at top speed, and the noise from that is noticeable. It is loud, but not as loud as the 5800Ultra. However, once you install your driver and the card is running in Windows the fan runs at a lower RPM. In fact, during our extreme game testing and overclocking the fan never once revved up to its highest RPM. The only time at all we heard its highest RPM was when booting our computer up. In normal operational mode the fan is no louder than any normal 80mm case fan. It is definitely not discernable with it inside your case with the case covers on.

This is a reference video card, and manufacturers will no doubt create their own unique HSF units. We will of course evaluate them and let you know how loud they are.

Drivers:

The driver NVIDIA has for us today is Forceware 60.72. This will not be the release version however. There will be a final WHQL’d version that will be ready when these cards ship. So while this driver is not final, and does have some known bugs, at least we have something so we can get some preliminary numbers on this video card and take a look at image quality.

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Above you can see the default 3D speeds on our card, 400/1.1GHz (core/mem).

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Now we start getting into the fun stuff. NVIDIA has done away with some of the AA modes we saw on the GeForceFX series such as 4xS and 6xS modes. What we see available now is 2XAA, 2xQAA (which is their Quincunx method), 4XAA and 8XAA. All of these modes are Rotated-Grid Multi-Sampling. In the next picture above we can see the Anisotropic levels available, 2X, 4X, 8X and now 16X. Also note they are using an adaptive algorithm for AF.

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The GeForceFX series was criticized harshly for its lack of image quality control. NVIDIA was forcing their way of filtering on you without giving you the choice in the control panel. The GeForce 6 series changes this as we finally have the options we have been promised for some time. In the first shot above you can see the Image Settings slider. You can move this from High Performance to High Quality, and Quality is the default setting. What this does is change the level of filtering from Bilinear (High Performance) to “Brilinear” (High Quality) by default. We say Brilinear because by default the Trilinear Optimizations are turned On which keeps the card from performing full Trilinear. But full Trilinear CAN be had.

Look at the next screenshot above. You will see there is an option when you click on “Show Advanced Settings” called Trilinear Optimizations, and the slider has two positions, On or Off. If you turn this slider to the “Off” position then you will get full Trilinear no matter what the Image Settings slider is set to. This works with and without Anisotropic filtering. Yay!

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You can see the difference in filtering quality in the first shot above. What we have done is take a D3D Filtering Tester program and cut the image in half, with the left side showing what Trilinear Optimizations On look like compared to Trilinear Optimizations Off on the right side. You can clearly see the difference in the two halves, with the right half showing better filtering between mip-maps.

Another fact that is very much worth mentioning here is that when we compared the GeForce 6800Ultra (Trilinear Optimizations OFF) with the 9800XT, no differences could be easily discerned, if at all. Given that, we have concluded that NVIDIA has now given us what we have asked for, and that is the ability to turn off their "Brilinear" filtering.