The Verdict
So what's the verdict on Albatron's GeForce 6800 GT you ask? Well just imagine power... absolutely divine graphics power versus an amazing feature set is what you will get for that hard earned money of yours. It's not cheap but NVIDIA simply did an amazing job with their Series 6 products. They probably never sold more high-end category graphics cards then they did ever. I do want to raise a tiny personal concern which lies with the manufacturers these days. Lately what we see too often is 100% reference based products. And I can completely understand that, it's about time and cost control; but we have to look at it from the consumer's point of view. So what made the previous generation product from Albatron so popular? The entire package with the top notch game bundle, but most of all their fine WiseFan cooling, which was just an amazing option. I really miss that stuff on this product, not because it's needed so much cooling wise... heck no the reference cooling is very sufficient. The unconventional WiseFan cooling just made it a real Albatron product. Right now it's like buying a sports car without the glossy rims. To bad... and hopefully we'll see it back in their future products.
Set that small fact aside and just look at the actual product, we can state that we see a high quality and greatly build videocard here. The card performed as expected from A to Z, very good PCB build, nice blue PCB color it was even quite tweakable. Yes, overclocking wise the card showed really nice things considering that classic reference cooling design.
Next to that you'll get excellent gaming performance as that is what you can expect from the GeForce 6800 GT, do not forget dual monitor candy, really great movie/media/DVD playback and crystal clear 2D and 3D image display. Stability and performance of this product is really good, it did not once crash or show weird behavior during our tests, which seems to be standard for any NVIDIA graphics card these days. Performance equals your money... performance in this case is really close to the 6800 Ultra, yet the 6800 GT actually has several advantages over that more expensive product, this is a card for blokes... guy stuff!
NVIDIA stripped off one Molex connector compared to the Ultra model that uses two. Secondly, this is a single slot design card. It will save you a PCI slot (yay). Thirdly, it's 100 USD bucks cheaper that makes it a very attractive buy in the high-end range. Fourth is cooling, a single slot solution is not only looking great, its cooling is great and, most of all, noise-wise all you'll hear is a smooth civilized hum as you can expect from any decent graphics card. Nothing loud or tacky.
I already stated it in our reference review in this timeframe in 2004, the Geforce 6800 GT is a nearly perfect and very exciting product in my eyes. With its sporty name it's actually quite affordable for something that belongs in the the high-end range. It offers you any available graphics technology plus a little extra in the form of Shader Model 3. Feature-wise it's a luxury cocktail, a blend of the best technology available. The idea behind the product was to make an affordable, high-performing graphics card with the means to annihilate everything in its path and NVIDIA well... did just that. Everything about this card simply works, everything is what you expect it to be. This is an ideal card for the enthusiast gamer who needs to relax and chill after a hard days work or local fragfest.
Albatron's GeForce 6800 GT my friends, is a great graphics card, yet compared to the competition it does not set itself aside as being better or worse, this is a 100% reference model with a slightly faster core. But man... does GeForce 6800 GT kick ass in games or what?
Right, back to Call of Duty United Offensive... which again consumes too much of my time! What a game eh? BTW I'm playing it with 16x Anisotropic filtering and 4x Anti Aliasing enabled on the Albtron 6800 GT and it's smooth ... man!
Hilbert.
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Product: GeForce 6800 GT 256 MB GDDR3
Series: Trinity 6800GT
More info: Albatron
MSRP: 399 USD
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