Page 2

The Product

Right you already had a peek at the card. 128 MB DDR SDRAM memory can be found on the frontside of the PCB. This memory is clocked at 2x368.55 (737) MHz, the GPU at a fantastic 385 MHz where the previous models 6800 where at 325 or 350, nice. This product has a 256-bit memory bus. The card itself sports TV-out and 2xDVI Ports. Despite the unusual look of the board with the ramsinks and cooling solution, the board is 100% based on NVIDIA's reference design.

The graphics core itself is build upon a 0.13 Micron Process technology that is fabricated at IBM. As rumors suggested the 6800 indeed has a lot of transistors. I personally didn't count them but NVIDIA states that there are 222 Million transistors, now imagine all that on a 40mm x 40mm FlipChip GPU running ~385 MHz. The transistor count of this actual core is higher than a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition has.

• 12 pipeline GPU architecture (16 on 6800 GT & Ultra).
• Up-to 8x more shading performance compared to the previous generation
• CineFX 3.0 engine - Yes indeed... DirectX Shaders model 3.0 for really nice visual effects
• On Chip Video processor.
• DDR1 memory on a 256-bit Memory interface @ 737 MHz
• UltraShadow II technology
• High Precision Dynamic Range (HDR) technology
• 128-studio precision through the entire pipeline - 32-bit Color precision; this time with nice performance.
• IntelliSample 3.0 Technology - 16x Anisotropic Filtering & Rotating Grid Anti Aliasing
• Full MPEG encoding and decoding
• Advanced Adaptive De-Interlacing
• Video Scaling and Filtering - HQ filtering techniques including HDTV resolutions
• Integrated TV Encoder - TV-output up-to 1028x768 resolutions
• OpenGL 1.5 Optimizations and support
• DVC 3.0 (Digital Vibrance Control)
• Dual 400 MHz RAMDACs which support QXGA displays up-to 2048x1536 @ 85 Hz
• Dual DVI

Let me explain briefly what happens in the pipeline for you to understand its importance, each pixel that is rendered on your screen goes through a pipe where it'll receive its complex color/effect etc. Each time that pixel is altered it'll pass through the pixel pipeline, one pass is one clock cycle. You can imagine going from 8 to 12 or 16 pipes can bring you a dramatic performance increase. I have to note here that these are not theoretical pipelines as rumored by some websites prior to the product announcements. They are scalable though, each pipe is available at any time in sets of 4. Where NV35 was stereotyped as 4x2/8x0 architecture, the NV40 is 16x1/32x0 or in the case of the standard 6800 12x1/24x0.

The card as stated has Wise Fan technology mounted on it in combination with heatpipe cooling, we can notice a nice decorative bright blue LED, which emits light to its ambient surroundings. The cooling solution is very nice to look at, not really small in size though, the PCI slot below the graphics card is free though. On the back we can see one huge heatsink that covers the Wisefan part of the card.

Specs	GeForce 6600	GeForce 6600 GT	GeForce 6800	GeForce 6800 GT	GeForce 6800 Ultra
Codename	NV43	NV43	NV40	NV40GT	NV40U
Transistors	222 million	222 million	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	128-bit		256-bit
Memory clock	Up to manufacturer	2x500 MHz	2 x 350MHz	2 x 500MHz	2 x 600MHz
PCB	P212	P212	P210	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)
MSRP	$150	$229	$299	$399	$499
Availability	Now	Now	Now

The Wise and Cool Solution

One of the most interesting things about this card is of course it's cooling solution, Albatron calls it their 'Wise Fan technology,' which is all about redundancy. This is verion 3 already. When we look at the active part of the cooling (located on the backside of the card, it'll work like this: two working fans on the sink are active one fan is deactivated and functions as a spare fan, which turns on when one of the other two stops (tested and verified working btw).

As you can guess, millions of transistors running at 385 MHz produce heat and this is really cool, the third fan will enable itself when the chip is getting too hot at a threshold temperature of 56°C, as far as I could see the cooler has its own little sensor built in that is not related to the temperature sensor built into the graphics core. This actually works pretty darn good.

I halted one of the fans with my finger and as soon as that happened the third fan would kick in. Despite the fact it can utilize three fans I have to state that it's not noisy at all. In fact it does not produce more sound than a common graphics card fan, in fact way less then that. One other cool item I need to mention when we are talking about the wisefan technology is a little blue LED that is emitting light as soon as the PC starts up. Have a look at the photoshoot in the upcoming pages.

Of course the huge plus of this design here has to be the heatpipe cooling. By utilizing the two technologies you use the best of both. The heatpipe design quickly transports heat to the backside of the card where two or depending on heat, three fans will cool that air down. Since you are using heatpipe technology which cools the hot air while transporting it the active fans can be small and silent. And they are, I really have not been able to hear them.

The results are really amazing, the temperature was 39 Degrees C in idle. And when we stressed the graphics core the maximum temperature measured was a lovely 51 Degrees Celsius. That is quite amazing for such a silent design my fellow guru's.

A maximum temperature of just over 50 Degrees C is what we measured with the GPU 100% stressed.