GPU featuresof the Geforce 6800

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	*Nvidia Geforce 6800 (NV40)*	Geforce 6800 Ultra
	**128 DDR RAM @ 2450Mhz***
	*8x AGP*
	Dual 400Mhz
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Contents

Review : Geforce 6800 Ultra
Date : 27:05/04
Page : 3
Reviewed By : ThePanther

A great step forward in graphics card technology. The Geforce 6800 takes a leap into the future, with a brand new set of features for the next level of DirectX. More efficiency and even more pixel pushing power, coupled with un paralleled image quality and realism. Top that with the re-introduction of SLI and you have a behemoth of a card setup. We give you the Geforce 6800 Ultra, the first to be released in a line of Geforce 6 cards.

Full Card Specifications

So lets have a look at what the numbers have to say about the card. Even though the theoretic maximum specifications of the card are not a true indication of its real world power, it does show what the card is capable of in the right circumstances.

Type	Specification
Memory	128/256/512Mb GDDR III RAM
Memory Clock speed	DDR 550Mhz (1.1Ghz)
Clock speed	400Mhz
Memory Bandwidth	35.2Gb/s
Theoretical Fill rate	6.4 Billion Texels/s
Vertex Processing	600 Million Vertices/s
RAMDAC(s)	2x 400Mhz
Pixel Pipelines	16
Texture Units per pipeline	1
Transistor Count	222 Million

GPU Features From Nvidia.com

CineFX™ 3.0 Shading Architecture

Vertex Shaders
- Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Vertex Shader 3.0
- Displacement mapping
- Vertex frequency stream divider
- Infinite length vertex programs*
Pixel Shaders
- Support for DirectX 9.0 Pixel Shader 3.0
- Full pixel branching support
- Support for Multiple Render Targets (MRTs)
- Infinite length pixel programs*
Next-Generation Texture Engine
- Up to 16 textures per rendering pass
- Support for 16-bit floating point format and 32-bit floating point format
- Support for non-power of two textures
- Support for sRGB texture format for gamma textures
- DirectX and S3TC texture compression
Full 128-bit studio-quality, floating point precision through the entire rendering pipeline with native hardware support for 32bpp, 64bpp, and 128bpp rendering modes

NVIDIA High-Precision Dynamic-Range (HPDR) Technology

Full floating point support throughout entire pipeline
Floating point filtering improves the quality of images in motion
Floating point texturing drives new levels of clarity and image detail
Floating point frame buffer blending gives detail to special effects like motion blur and explosions
New rotated-grid antialiasing removes jagged edges for incredible edge quality

Intellisample™ 3.0 Technology

Advanced 16x anisotropic filtering
Blistering-fast antialiasing and compression performance
Support for advanced lossless compression algorithms for colour, texture, and z-data at even higher resolutions and frame rates
Fast z-clear
High-resolution compression technology (HCT) increases performance at higher resolutions through advances in compression technology

UltraShadow II Technology

Designed to enhance the performance of shadow-intensive games, like id Software’s Doom III

Advanced Engineering

Over 220m transistors
Designed for PCI Express x16
Supports PCI Express high-speed interconnect (HSI) technology for bidirectional interconnect protocol conversion
Full support of AGP 8X including Fast Writes and sideband addressing
Support for the industry’s fastest GDDR3 memory
256-bit advanced memory interface
0.13 micron process technology
Advanced thermal management and thermal monitoring
40 mm × 40 mm, BGA flip-chip package

Advanced Video and Display Functionality

Dedicated on-chip video processor
MPEG video encode and decode
WMV9 decode acceleration
Advanced adaptive de-interlacing
High-quality video scaling and filtering
Integrated NTSC/PAL TV encoder supporting resolutions up to 1024 × 768 without the need for panning with built-in Macrovision copy protection
DVD and HDTV-ready MPEG-2 decoding up to 1920x1080i resolutions
Dual integrated 400 MHz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and including 2048 × 1536 at 85Hz
Dual DVO ports for interfacing to external TMDS transmitters and external TV encoders
Microsoft® Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) supports multiple video windows with full video quality and features in each window
VIP 1.1 interface support for video-in function
Full NVIDIA® nView™ multi-display technology capability

NVIDIA® Digital Vibrance Control™ (DVC) 3.0 Technology

Colour controls
Image sharpening controls

Operating Systems

Windows XP
Windows ME
Windows 2000
Windows 9X
Macintosh OS, including OS X
Linux

API Support

Complete DirectX support, including the latest version of Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0
Full OpenGL, including OpenGL 1.5

Conclusion

Well you have to say that its impressive. The Geforce 6800 Ultra has an impressive set of specifications and an impressive set of features to go with it. So on the plus side of the card, its by far the fastest and best image quality card out there on the market at the moment, without a shadow of a doubt. I don't need to go into more depth about that as you have read already. So the down sides to the card. I can obviously say the price, but all due respect to Nvidia the release price will be the same as the other top of the range cards it has produced even though the Geforce 6800 is a bigger leap in technology. Apart from that the power requirement of this behemoth is the only draw back for me. In a nig system you are going to need a fairly hefty power supply in order to cope with it. Also it will tie up 2 of your Molex power connectors, this will not leave many for the other devices such as Hard disk drives and CD/DVD drives in your system.

If you have the money and your looking for the best of the best then currently this is it. In some game tests in can be almost twice as fast as its rivals at very high resolutions. Giving you great gameplay and great image quality at the same time.

The release of the X800 by ATI has made this card on its own only the second fastest in terms of raw power. However with the re-born technology SLI (Scan Line Interleave) you can have two of these Geforce 6800's together in one board (hardware requirements permitting). The enthusiasts will love this technology coming back and will will be great in high end power systems. You just make sure your PSU is up to the task !!!

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