![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, July 14, 2004
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
BFGTech GeForce 6800GT OC Review
BFGTech’s GeForce 6800GT OC video card and the gaming experience it can deliver. We compare it to a 6800Ultra and Radeon X800Pro playing FarCry, FlightSim 2004, PainKiller, Nascar Thunder 2004, City of Heroes, and Madden 2004. The GeForce 6800GT may just be the best gaming card for the price.
Software and Drivers:
There are two CDs included in the package. The driver CD contains ForceWare driver version 60.85. Note that in this review we are using the latest drivers available to us, version 61.45 and we expect these to be public very soon. There is also an online manual contained on the CD along with Adobe Acrobat Reader and DirectX 9 if you don’t have it installed. nvDVD is also included along with NVIDIA demos. Windowblinds with BFG and NVIDIA skins are also on the CD.
The other CD has playable demos of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Silent Storm, and Painkiller.
As you can see above we are using ForceWare version 61.45 in this review. With the ForceWare 61.45 driver Trilinear Optimizations and Anisotropic Optimizations are ENABLED by default. We left all driver properties, including the Trilinear and Anisotropic Optimizations, to their default settings with the exception of disabling VSYNC and manipulating the AA and AF level sliders for each game.
Test Setup:
ABIT IC7-G (i875P), Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz “C”, 2 X 512MB Corsair XMS PC3200LL TwinX Dual Channel DDR400, Maxtor 40GB ATA/133, Windows XP Professional SP1 with DirectX 9.0b.
BFGTech GeForce 6800GT OC – Operating at default clock speeds 370MHz/1GHz using ForceWare 61.45.
BFGTech GeForce 6800Ultra OC – Downclocked to stock 6800Ultra clock speeds 400MHz/1.1GHz using ForceWare 61.45.
ATI Radeon X800Pro – Operating at default clock speeds 475MHz/900MHz using Catalyst 4.7 (WHQL).
Please be aware we test our video cards a bit different from what is the norm. We concentrate on examining the real-world gameplay that each video card provides and do this using real gameplay instead of canned benchmarks that tell you nothing about a true gaming experience. Gameplay includes performance and image quality evaluation. We have two sections, “Highest Playable” and “Apples to Apples”. The Highest Playable section shows the best Image Quality delivered at a playable frame rate. Following the Highest Playable section we have a brief Apples to Apples performance section for those that find benefit of framerates with matching IQ. We use a high performance system with a very fast CPU in order to remove CPU bottlenecking.
Should you wish to know more about our thinking behind using gameplay for evaluations instead of benchmarks, please read our Cheating the Cheaters editorial
FarCry
(DirectX 9)
We are using the full version game of FarCry with patch 1.1 applied. At the time of testing the official final version, 1.2 patch was not released. We will use the new version 1.2 patch in all reviews once it is released to the public.
We set the in-game advanced video quality settings to their highest levels as shown below.
For the X800Pro we set the AA and AF level from within the driver control panel. For the GeForce 6800GT OC we set the AF level through the control panel, but we had to set the AA level through the game in order to enable AA in FarCry.
We graphed a manual run-through using the “Fort” level in all graphs.
In order to find the best settings that provided the best gameplay performance on our system we played through many levels in FarCry. We found that with the BFGTech GeForce 6800GT OC 1280x1024 was the ideal resolution with 2XAA enabled to help get rid of the jaggies and 4XAF enabled to clear up texture blurriness. We did try playing at these settings with 8XAF, but there were instances where performance dropped too low for extended periods of time to be playable. Dropping down to 4XAF provided us with the extra performance we needed in those situations. With the GeForce 6800Ultra we were able to run with 8XAF and 2XAA at 1280x1024. If you look at the performance chart below the graph, you can see that performance was indeed slower at this higher 8XAF setting on the 6800Ultra compared to the BFGTech 6800GT OC at 4XAF. It appears that raising the AF level in FarCry on the 6800 series does cause a significant impact in performance.
With the Radeon X800Pro we found 1280x1024 with 2XAA and 8XAF to be the absolutely highest setting we could play at in FarCry. At these settings the performance was lower than the BFGTech 6800GT OC and the GeForce 6800Ultra. The X800Pro bottomed out at 24FPS. While the BFGTech 6800GT OC is at a lower AF setting, performance was better across the board. Even the GeForce 6800Ultra at the same settings as the X800Pro performed slightly better than the X800Pro.
If you like playing this game at high resolutions we did find that on each card you could play at 1600x1200 if you wish, but you will have to disable both AA and AF to get acceptable performance. If you refer to our “apples-to-apples” section at the end you can see all three cards directly compared at 1600x1200.
Image Quality:
The three screenshots above compare some of the effects in FarCry. In the first screenshot comparison above, you can see that the same problem rendering effects in FarCry are still present. These graphical problems will not be cleared up until patch 1.2 is released for FarCry. In the second screenshot above we do see one obvious difference between the two cards. The Radeon X800Pro is rendering the sky a darker color than the BFGTech 6800GT OC, which is rendering the sky color correctly. In the third screenshot both cards are rendering the water quality "exactly" the same.
In these next two screenshots we are specifically comparing Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic quality between the two cards at the highest playable settings tested. In the first screenshot comparing Anti-Aliasing we did not find any difference in the AA quality in the railing. However, on the floor of the boat, between the red lines we have placed in this picture, is where we did notice some difference. It appears that the Radeon X800Pro is doing a better job at Anti-Aliasing here than the BFGTech 6800GT OC. In the second picture above we are comparing Anisotropic quality at the highest playable settings. The only difference we notice between them is in the top left of the screenshot where it appears 8XAF on the X800Pro helps clear up some blurriness that 4XAF on the BFGTech 6800GT OC cannot do. There is an obvious image quality difference between 4XAF and 8XAF at extreme distances.
While there are some differences, it is hard to say with a straight face that any of the differences are going to greatly impact your gaming experience in a negative fashion. At what we have deemed the cards best playable level (which is likely to be higher than most persons' expectations) all of these cards did a great job at providing a great gaming experience. In a "blind taste test" you would be hard pressed to tell the video cards apart playing FarCry.