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BFGTech GeForce 6800 OC

BFGTech’s GeForce 6800 OC is taken through our full gamut of gameplay evaluation to find out how this card compares to others. In case you are not up on nomenclature, this is the "vanilla" or "non-ultra" 6800 that has its pipelines scaled back to meet a lower price point.

Introduction:

NVIDIA based video cards are back in the game this summer offering some fierce competition to ATI. We’ve recently taken a look at BFGTech’s highest performing product the GeForce 6800Ultra OC with Water Block which was clocked by default at an amazing 70MHz over the stock speeds of a GeForce 6800Ultra. In our testing we found this card to compete very well with the ATI X800XT-PE in game performance at high image quality settings. We have also taken a look at BFGTech’s GeForce 6800Ultra OC and found its performance to fair better than a regular 6800Ultra thanks to its higher core clock speed.

Moving down the product line a level we have also evaluated the BFGTech GeForce 6800GT OC which has a higher core clock speed than a regular GeForce 6800GT. We found that the only difference between the 6800GT and 6800Ultra is simply core and memory clock speeds, as they both have 16 fully functioning pixel pipelines and exactly the same features, but at one hundred dollars difference. Because of the clock speeds being the only difference between the BFGTech GeForce 6800GT OC and BFGTech GeForce 6800Ultra OC we found performance in games to remain very competitive. We were also impressed with the fact that BFGTech GeForce 6800GT OC is a single slot video card requiring only one Molex connector.

Moving down the GeForce 6800 series line another level we come to the "low end" of the GeForce 6800 series the GeForce 6800. We put "low end" in quotes because even though this is the lowest performing part of the GeForce 6800 series it still packs all the features of its big brothers at a very appealing price point. Many people refer to this as the "Non Ultra" 6800 but the correct label for it is simply GeForce 6800. The GeForce 6800 has the complete feature set of Shader Model 3.0 plus every other feature of the 6800 series. The differences that set the GeForce 6800 apart from the GeForce 6800GT and Ultra is that the pixel pipelines have been reduced from 16 to 12 and the core and memory clock speeds are lower. It all breaks down like this:

NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Series Spec:

BFGTech GeForce 6800 product lineup:

Today we are taking a look at the BFGTech GeForce 6800 OC which comes equipped with 128MB of GDDR, 12 pipelines, the complete feature set of the 6800 series and is clocked at 350MHz/700MHz by default.

BFGTech GeForce 6800 OC:

Through the plastic window cutout on the front of the box you get to see what this video card looks like on the shelf before you decide if you want to buy it or not. Right under the window the box is adorned with the fact that this card has a lifetime warranty and free live 24/7 tech support. There is also a label indicating that there are game demos inside as well as a discount coupon for BFGTech hardware. On the back of the box features are outlined.

If you are tired of the same old green color PCB then say hello to the BFGTech GeForce 6800 OC’s blue PCB which incidentally matches the blue colored LED’s on the fans. What is very striking about this video card is the fact that it has a rather large copper heatsink fan unit covering the GPU and memory modules with two fans. Though it is large this is still a single-slot video card. On the back is a plastic piece which is what the heatsink fan unit is screwed down onto holding it in place.

Taking a closer look at this plastic piece on the back we notice that it is not actually touching the PCB. It is slightly raised, but since it is plastic and not a thermally conductive piece cooling the back of the GPU the hot air that gets trapped underneath dissipates more slowly.

The BFGTech GeForce 6800 OC only requires one Molex connector. It has a VGA port, DVI port and TV-Out port.

In the system you can see that each fan has blue LEDs that light up.

Inside the box is a Molex splitter cable, a DVI to VGA adapter and CD’s and manuals. On the driver CD are NVIDIA drivers, an install manual, nVDVD software and 3D demos. On the demo CD are demos of Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, Silent Storm and Painkiller.