NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra: The Next Step Forward
by Derek Wilson on April 14, 2004 8:42 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Card and The Test
This is our NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra engineering sample. No, it's not one slot, yes, it has 2 molex connectors, and generally its actually not very loud.
The 16x1 GeForce 6800 Ultra will be clocked at 400/550 (core/mem) and priced at $499, while its 12x1 little brother the GeForce 6800 non-ultra will be priced at $299 (clock speeds to be determined).
Here's a quick rundown of the key features:
. Vertex Shaders
° Support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Vertex Shader 3.0
° Displacement mapping
° Vertex frequency stream divider
° 65000+ instruction length programs
. Pixel Shaders
° Support for DirectX 9.0 Pixel Shader 3.0
° Full pixel branching support
° Support for Multiple Render Target (MRTs)
° 65000+ instruction length 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 forgamma textures
° DirectX and S3TC texture compression
. Full 128-bit floating point precision through the entire rendering pipeline (64-bit max precision to framebuffer and display)
The chip is 222 Million transistors fabbed on a .13 micron process. Currently a 480W power supply and 2 free completely independent connections to the PSU are required. 8x Rotated grid multisample antialiasing, and 16x (128tap) anisotropic filtering are available.
Our test system:
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
1GB DDR RAM (OCZ Platinum at 2-2-3-6)
Seagate 120GB HD
PC Power & Cooling 510W ATX Power Supply
Other cards used in the tests:
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950
ATI Radeon 9800 XT
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
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Pete - Monday, April 19, 2004 - link
Shinei,I did not know that. </Johnny Carson>
Derek,
I think it'd be very helpful if you listed the game version (you know, what patches have been applied) and map tested, for easier reference. I don't even think you mentioned the driver version used on each card, quite important given the constant updates and fixes.
Something to think about ahead of the X800 deadline. :)
zakath - Friday, April 16, 2004 - link
I've seen a lot of comments on the cost of these next-gen cards. This shouldn't surprise anyone...it has always been this way. The market for these new parts is small to begin with. The best thing the next gen does for the vast majority of us non-fanbois-who-have-to-have-the-bleeding-edge-part is that it brings *todays* cutting edge parts into the realm of affordability.Serp86 - Friday, April 16, 2004 - link
Bah! My almost 2 year old 9700pro is good enough for me now. i think i'll wait for nv50/r500....Also, a better investment for me is to get a new monitor since the 17" one i have only supports 1280x1024 and i never turn it that high since the 60hz refresh rate makes me go crazy
Wwhat - Friday, April 16, 2004 - link
that was to brickster, neglected to mention thatWwhat - Friday, April 16, 2004 - link
Yes you are aloneChronoReverse - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
Ahem, this card has been tested by some people with a high-quality 350W power supply and it was just fine.Considering that anyone who could afford a 6800U would have a good powersupply (Thermaltake, Antec or Enermax), it really doesn't matter.
The 6800NU uses only one molex.
deathwalker - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
Oh my god...$400 and u cant even put it in 75% of the systems on peoples desks today without buying a new power supply at a cost of nearly another $100 for a quailty PS...i think this just about has to push all the fanatics out there over the limit...no way in hell your going to notice the perform improvement in a multiplayer game over a network..when does this maddness stop.Justsomeguy21 - Monday, November 29, 2021 - link
LOL, this was too funny to read. Complaining about a bleeding edge graphics card costing $400 is utterly ridiculous in the year 2021 (almost 2022). You can barely get a midrange card for that price and that's assuming you're paying MSRP and not scalper prices. 2004 was a great year for PC gaming, granted today's smartphones can run circles around a Geforce 6800 Ultra but for the time PC hardware was being pushed to the limits and games like Doom 3, Far Cry and Half Life 2 felt so nextgen that console games wouldn't catch up for a few years.deathwalker - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
Shinei - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
Pete, MP2 DOES use DX9 effects, mirrors are disabled unless you have a PS2.0-capable card. I'm not sure why, since AvP1 (a DX7 game) had mirrors, but it does nontheless. I should know, since my Ti4200 (DX8.1 compatible) doesn't render mirrors as reflective even though I checked the box in the options menu to enable them...Besides, it does have some nice graphics that can bog a card down at higher resolutions/AA settings. I'd love to see what the game looks like at 2048x1536 with 4xAA and maxed AF with a triple buffer... Or even a more comfortable 1600x1200 with same graphical settings. :D