The Technical Blahblah
Both Prolink 6600 GT cards tested today are offered in a 128 MB configuration, now don't go thinking you have 256 MB capacity that supports 256-bit memory bandwidth. Physically the amount of framebuffer is true, but it's actually (2x)128-bit at work here, simply take your standard GeForce 6600 GT times two.
Same goes for the amount of memory, it's 128 MB per graphics core and you cannot look at two combined SLI cards as a 256 MB model. It simply does not work that way. Try to see it like this, textures and graphics data are in fact cloned and mirrored in both frame buffers in a 1:1 way so you're basically looking at 128 MB effective, which on it's term will effect things like high-resolution Anisotropic filtering and AA modes. Here we see a clear advantage for a single GeForce 6800 GT priced at the very same level.
That 2x 128 MB of DDR3 memory on the cards are rated at 1.6ns, which means it likely can offer you a 625MHz (1250MHz DDR) memory frequency when overclocked. The cards have a stock core clock of 500MHz and a default memory clock of 1120 MHz.
The cards utilizes 16 PCI-Express lanes divided in two, x8 PCI Express lanes per card. Quick note here as some of you are still wondering will this SLI stuff ever become available for AGP. Short answer is no it's just not possible, the AGP port's architecture simply does not allow that.
Once installed, well you can't help falling in love at the least a little bit, it's quite something that was achieved right there in that PC. You will get a little excited and very anxious to test it once you place that little SLI connector on the cards. Let's have a look at the default card specifications according to NVIDIA.
| Specs |
GeForce 6600 |
GeForce 6600 GT |
GeForce 6800 |
GeForce 6800 GT |
GeForce 6800 Ultra |
| Codename |
NV43 |
NV43 |
NV40 |
NV40GT |
NV40U |
| Transistors |
? |
? |
222 million |
| Process, GPU maker |
110nm |
110nm |
130nm, IBM |
| Core clock |
300 MHz |
500 MHz |
Up to 400 MHz |
350MHz |
400-450 MHz |
| Memory |
128MB DDR1 |
128MB GDDR3 |
128MB DDR1 |
256MB GDDR3 |
256MB GDDR3 |
| Memory bus |
64/128-bit |
256-bit |
| Memory clock |
Up to manufacturer |
2x500 MHz
2x450 MHz (AGP) |
2 x 550MHz |
2 x 500MHz |
2 x 600MHz |
| PCB |
P212 |
P212 |
P2?? |
P210 |
P210 |
| Pipelines |
8 |
8 |
12 |
16 |
16 |
| FP operations |
FP16, FP32 |
| DirectX |
DirectX 9.0c |
| Pixel shaders |
PS 3.0 |
| Vertex shaders |
VS 3.0 |
| OpenGL |
1.5+ (2.0) |
| Price |
$150 |
$229 |
$299 |
$399 |
$499 |
| Availability since |
Oct 2004 |
Oct/Nov 2004 |
May/June 2004 |
As you can unmistakably see there is a product for any budget. Let's have a look at today's cards.
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