The Verdict
Dear fellowship of Guru's... again Gigabyte has proven they make a high quality videocards. If you want a high-end card that's relatively affordable, extremely fast and reliable. The card performed as expected from A to Z, very good PCB build, a shame it has the reference board 100% including the green color (where's the Gigabyte Blue that I like so much and the unique cooling designs we loved so much??). Furthermore it has a reasonable software package.
Overclocking wise the card showed really nice things considering its classic reference cooling design. Furthermore excellent gaming performance is what you can expect from the GeForce 6800 GT, along with dual monitor support, really great movie/media playback and crystal clear 2D and 3D image display. Stability and performance of this product is really good, it did not once crash or showed 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. NVIDIA stripped off one Molex connector when compared to the Ultra model that uses two. Secondly, this is a single slot designed card. It will save you a PCI slot (yay). Thirdly, it's 100 USD bucks cheaper, which makes it a very attractive buy in the high-end range. Fourth is cooling, the single slot solution is not only looking great, its cooling is great and most of, noise wise, all you'll hear is a smooth civilized hum as you can expect from any decent graphics card. Nothing loud, nothing 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. Despite 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 3.0. 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 is attending a local fragfest.
This Guru's, 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. Now then... let me shut up and get back to the Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault demo, which by the way runs just fantastic on this puppy.
Game on,
Hilbert.
Product: GeForce 6800 GT 256 MB GDDR3
Series: N68T256D
More info: Gigabyte
MSRP: 399 USD
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