Now I know this was a very limited test, only a 3 GHz processor and very little comparative results. It however was meant as an indication to what you can and may expect, it is representable performance as most of you still have a very similar PC. I do believe that the majority of people out there has a system based on the PC configuration we just tested with. So at the very least you can good a good impression of what the card is all about and what it'll offer you for performance.

The card without a doubt is a worthy opponent to the 6800 GT, especially when you overclock it slightly. The price needs to come down just a little bit more though as 250 USD is a great price but 200-210 would make it just an awesome buy wouldn't it?

On the other hand, if your budget is an issue and you are bound at a maximum of say 250 EUR / 250 USD then you can get a lot of horsepower in that PC of yours for a decent amount of money. Any game to date is completely playable up-to 1280x1024 with a good set of image quality settings and often even at 1600x1200. Returning to "the pipes," as many of you say, the "Eehw it only has 12 pixel pipes" factor, with the 12 pipes, higher core and memory clock frequency the standard GeForce 6800 GS offers an excellent gaming experience and it should since it is still in that high-end class, but at a far better price.

In the lower segment of it, this is a high-end card. When you buy an NVIDIA Series 6 product it means full support for HDR, PureVideo as optional, Shader Model 3.0 and downwards. You can hook up your HDTV to the card, digital over DVI to HDMI if you like, decode standard media files over the GPU and offload the CPU with the help of PureVideo (20 bucks) and of course have a speedy and crisp, sharp 2D desktop displayed.

Point of View will offer you a very nice package. The red PCB colored NVIDIA reference board with the cooling shim changed to PoV of course is the kicker in the box. The value however kicks in at their included bundle for sure. Of course you'll receive the standard cables and other connectors but the best thing is that you receive two full modern games are well, being the fantastic Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory 3 and Prince of Persia. Don't be surprised to find slightly cheaper version without the games in the box also.

This is what I call a nice 12x10 card, for the people who game at that resolution will certainly get offered magnificent performance with great image quality and features. Next to that it has all the latest technology features you want and hey, you do not have to sell a kidney to be able to afford it...

Titles like Far Cry and Doom 3; Half-life 2, Splinter Cell 3 have no problems at all with this card even with the best IQ settings enabled. The heart of the beast has been fitted with a 222 Million transistor GPU doing 350 MHz and can be clocked even higher. This card is a pleasure to own and play games with.

Playing games, in the end it's all about price, versus performance versus image quality and the resolution you want to play in. The manufacturer suggested retail price for this product is roughly 249 EUR/USD for the 256 MB model, which means you'll likely get it even cheaper in e-tail. That makes this a truly nice graphics card and we can highly recommend it.

But... there might be yet another NVIDIA AGP card on the market very soon... Series 7.