NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra: The Next Step Forward
by Derek Wilson on April 14, 2004 8:42 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Similar to Anand's 9700 Pro introduction, the GeForce 6800 has set some pretty solid standards. We can now expect:1) Very high performance in current and future games.Of course, we aren't crowning any kings yet, as ATI will soon be making its mark on this generation of GPUs. We will have to wait to find out what they can bring to the table, but it is definitely turning out to be an exciting battle. Even with the added power requirements, the kinds of performance gains we have seen are pretty substantial, and ATI will have a good fight on their hands.
2) The ability to play at 2048x1536 in just about any game currently available or soon to be made available, and
3) The ability to play virtually any game at 1600x1200 with 4X AA and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled at smooth frame rates.
We were able to achieve very smooth frame rates under Halo at 2048x1536, and 34fps under FarCry at the same resolution. Unfortuantely, the driver is currently not stable enough to do all the testing we wanted at this resolution, so we'll have to hold off on bringing a full set of benchmarks to the table until later.
Even though we have taken a cursory glance at anisotropic filtering and antialiasing, and we didn't notice any glaring problems while testing games, we will need to revisit the issue of image quality. We are planning on bringing out another image quality after ATI releases their card. One thing is for sure, both sides need to make sure they are generating the highest quality images to avoid recurrences of last years many controversies.
We are looking forward to the next month of battle, and we hope you are as excited as we are to see how this plays out.
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Da3dalus - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
I'd like to see benchmarks of Painkiller in the upcoming NV40 vs R420 tests...Brickster - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
Am I the only one who thinks Nvidia's Nalu is the MOST bone-able cartoon out there?Oy, get the KY!
Warder45 - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
Did any reviews try and overclock the card? Is it not possible with the test card?DonB - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
Would have been better if it had a coax cable TV input + TV tuner. For $500, I would expect a graphic card to include EVERYTHING imaginable.Pete - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
Shinei #37,"Speaking of DX9/PS2.0, what about a Max Payne 2 benchmark?"
MP2 doesn't use DX9 effects. The game requires DX9 compatability, but only DX8 compliance for full effects.
Xbit-Labs has a ton of benches of next-gen titles as well, and is worth checking out. NV40 certainly redeems itself in the HL2 leak. :)
Wwhat - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
Anybody happen to know if it's possible to use a second (old) PSU to run it, you can pick up cheap 235 watt PSU's and would be helped with both extra connectors and power.I'm not sure it won't cause 'sync' problems though as a small difference between the rails of 2 PSU's would cause one to drain the other if the card's connectors aren't decoupled enough from the AGP port.
Pumpkinierre - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
Agrre with you Trog #59 on the venting. Also with DX9.0c having fp32 as spec., does this mean that FX series cards redeem themselves? (As the earlier DX9 spec was fp24 which was'nt present on the FX gpus causing a juggling act between fp16 and fp32 to match performance and IQ). Still, full fp32 on the FX cards might be too slow.mrprotagonist - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
What's with all the cheesy comments before the benchmarks? Anyone?Cygni - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
"what mobo and mobo drivers were used? i hear that the nforce2 provides an unfair performance advantage for nvidia"The test was on an Athlon 64 3400+ system, so i doubt it was using an Nforce2. But ya, i agree, the system specs were short. More details are required.
Brickster - Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - link
Derek, what was that Monitor you used?Thanks!