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The new generation of video cards from Nvidia is here. This
silicon peace of enginery will change the way you play games. Imagine Unreal
Torunament 4 at high quality runing over 60 frames per second!
Leaving quality issues aside, GeForce 6800 GT is clearly a
more powerful accelerator than X800 PRO. If they were sold at equal prices, the
former would be much more preferrable as it is faster in most tests. But there
are not many places where the difference is really huge.
However, there are too few 6800 cards for the moment, and
what price will be for GT is anyone's guess. Considering that GeForce 6800 Ultra
are sold from $550 to $700, chances are GT will be cheaper (-$100).
As for power requirements, GT has them lower than Ultra, so
300-360W will be quite enough. The one-slot design makes the card fit for any
case, and only a longer PCB may hinder the card's installation in the barebone.
Also noteworthy is the card's heating, as its core temperature reached 80°C even
when the cover was removed.
Well, we're waiting for serial cards to appear. I can say if
their retail prices are within USD 500 in Russia, they will be just swept away
from the counters. (Well, times change indeed: it hasn't been long since we
wrote that the cards would hardly be in demand if they cost over USD 400.) And
don't forget about overclocking: many GTs will be able to work at 400/1100 MHz.
We all know how fast ATI RADEON X800 PRO is advancing. Up to
recent time, NVIDIA had no product competitive to it within the same price
segment (USD 399). So, they decided to release an Ultra-like product that has
cheaper GDDR3 2.0ns memory and a chip working at 350 instead of 400 MHz. It
enabled NVIDIA to remove the second external power connector from the board as
well as to minimise the cooling system.
However, it all will be examined in details a bit later. Now,
I'll only mention that the chip retains all 16 pixel pipelines (or 4 quads). As
a result, GeForce 6800 GT fillrate 350 MHz x 16 pipelines = 5600 Mp/s will
compete with X800 PRO's 475 MHz x 12 pipelines = 5700 Mp/s. As we see, the
fillrates are almost identical. I believe, much will depend on bandwidth, and
6800 GT has a certain advantage here: 500 (1000) MHz vs. 450 (900) MHz in X800
PRO. Plus, differences in the architecture and other peculiarities will play a
role too.
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