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Many times in the past I attempted to sit down and write my impressions about
a newly purchased graphics card, but for various reasons never got to it. I
guess this time I managed to finally find the courage.
I’m neither a professional reviewer nor will I ever claim to be an expert
when it comes to 3D and thus my methods/approaches might seem quite “unconventional” to
some. It’s possible that mistakes or things that I’ve overlooked
are present in this review, so if you detect any feel free to let me know.
Last small disclaimer is that, as many might know I seem to prefer deferred
rendering architectures; albeit it’s true it does not mean that I don’t
like other approaches either or that I don’t purchase whatever I think
will cover my needs best for any given timeframe and that irrelevant of brand
name or IHV. In the recent past I couldn’t keep my hands off a GF4Ti,
in order to get followed by a 9700PRO and today a simple 6800.
Usually I wait a little bit after a new product line gets released for initial
prices to drop, but this time I opted for the smallest brother of the 6800
line. In the foreseeable future I might purchase one of the higher end models,
when prices get more reasonable.
The GeForce 6800 is clocked at default at 325MHz core frequency and carries
128MB of DDR SDRAM at 350MHz (700 effective). It’s a single slot design
just like the 6800GT and apart from the much lower clocked memory (actually
the GT and Ultra have 256MB of GDDR3 instead), one other distinctive difference
is that it has 12 SIMD channels instead of 16 the other two more expensive
models have.
First impression is that the board isn’t exactly small; in fact it is
about the same size as my older GF4Ti 4400. On contrary the 9700PRO is a lot
smaller than both, yet to be honest it doesn’t make a difference to me
as long as an accelerator delivers what I want or expect it to.
A quick summary of it’s specifications:
256bit wide bus
12 SIMD channels with 1 TMU each
325MHz core frequency
350MHz DDR1 SDRAM
3900 MegaPixels/s bilinear fill-rate (1950 MegaPixels/s trilinear)
22.4 GB/sec peak memory bandwidth
PS/VS 3.0
System Setup:
Epox 8RDA+
Athlon XP 3000+
1024MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM @ 166MHz (CL2.5)
GeForce 6800@325/350MHz
Soundblaster Audigy 2 (6.1)
Seagate 80GB (UDMA5) 7200rpm
Herolchi 450W PSU
Samsung SyncMaster 1100DF (max. 2048*1536@75Hz)
Software:
Windows XP Professional SP1
DX9.0c
Forceware 61.45
RivaTuner 2.0 RC15
DX9 FSAA Viewer 5
D3D AFTester 13a
ArchMark
FableMark
FRAPS 2.0
Deferred Shading demo
Umark v1.20
3Dmark 2001 SE
3Dmark 2003 320
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter 1.05
F1 2002
Unreal Tournament 2004 (3226)
FarCry 1.2
Need For Speed: Underground
Rallisport Challenge
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