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- Date:
- Monday , November 07, 2005
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS Preview
NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 GS takes aim at ATI’s recently launched, but yet to be sold, ATI Radeon X1600 XT. We evaluate the gaming experience NVIDIA’s new mainstream performance GPU provides in today’s top four hottest selling games.
Introduction:
Competition is a great word. One of the definitions of competition is as follows:
This sums up the situation we are presented with today. NVIDIA is focusing on the “Performance Mainstream” market – cards in the US $249 price range – and they are striving to provide a better product than the competition.“Rivalry between two or more businesses striving for the same customer or market.”
This class of hardware is mainstream, but with a performance edge. Think of these cards as your “Enthusiasts” of the mainstream price segment. (Does anyone remember the Ti4200? Could we be that lucky again?)
Over a month ago, ATI announced their new product offering at $249, the Radeon X1600 XT. You can read all about it here, and find out how what sort of gaming experience it provides. The day the X1600 XT was (paper) launched, its immediate competition was the “vanilla” NVIDIA GeForce 6800. Looking back at our game play evaluation, the GeForce 6800 seemed to keep up very well with ATI’s new Radeon X1600 XT. In some games, the 6800 provided a better gaming experience than the Radeon X1600 XT; in other games, the cards were dead even.
The GeForce 6800 seemed to be a good match with the Radeon X1600 XT and it seemed that NVIDIA really didn’t have to do anything special to compete with it. Apparently, NVIDIA doesn’t just want to break even; they want to blow the the X1600 XT out of the water. To do this, they have created a brand new GPU called the GeForce 6800 GS to compete directly with the Radeon X1600 XT at $249.
GeForce 6800 GS:
The previous lineup had the GeForce 6800 256MB video card sitting at $249, the 6600 GT under that at $149, and the 6600 for something less than the 6600 GT. In the new lineup, shown in the second slide, the GeForce 6800 GS 256MB card now replaces the GeForce 6800 at $249. The 6600 GT stays at the same price, and the new 6600 with 256MB DDR2 is introduced at $119. We will be looking at a 6600 DDR2 board later on this month.
To get to the bottom of what the GeForce 6800 GS is, you need only to look at the model name chosen, which tells you it is based on NV40 technology and not G70 (GeForce 7800 GT/GTX) technology. In fact, if you want to get technical, the GeForce 6800 GS is the NV42 core, and it uses the 110 nanometer manufacturing process. The 6800 GS has what you would call 12 pixel, or fragment, pipelines, and 5 vertex engine units at play. The reference clock speeds NVIDIA is calling for are 425MHz for the GPU and 500MHz (1GHz GDDR3) for the memory. There is 256MB of GDDR3 riding on a 256-bit memory bus. All of the 3D specifications match up with the GeForce 6800 line: Shader Model 3.0, FP16 HDR, SLI, but no support for any kind of Transparency Antialiasing.
When you look at the specifications, you can see that the 6800 GS very closely resembles a GeForce 6800. The differences are higher clock speeds that put the fillrate on the GS right under a GeForce 6800 GT (5100 MPixels/second for the 6800 GS and 5600 MPixels/second for the 6800 GT). The memory bandwidth offered is also right on target with what a GeForce 6800 GT offers at 32GB/sec. This means that there is a lot of fillrate and memory bandwidth being offered here for the price of $249. Basically, we have what amounts to a GPU that is just shy of being a 6800 GT if you are just looking at specifications.
GeForce 6800 GS Pictures:
The reference NVIDIA card uses a black heat sink and shroud with a green NVIDIA logo. The core itself is copper, and it makes good contact with the GPU. The RAM is also cooled with the black aluminum heat sink as it makes contact with all modules. There is even a heat pipe method in use to help with cooling. The plate on the back does not make contact with the back of the PCB or any component; it is simply there to hold the heat sink in place. This video card is not that heavy, but it is heavier and longer than the Radeon X1600 XT.
You will also notice that it does require external power through the 6-pin PCI-Express power cable. The Radeon X1600 XT, on the other hand, does not require external power. The GeForce 6800 GS is fully SLI capable as is suggested by the connector on top. There is one DVI and VGA port, along with TV-Out and HDTV out support.