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Gigabyte 6800 - In Solid Copper Flavor |
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Written by Phyro
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Wednesday, 27 October 2004 |
CoolTechZone published a review on the Gigabyte GeForce 6800. nVidia launched their GeForce 6 series of GPUs a while back and now every board partner has their versions of 6800 flavors, most notably the regular 6800. This is the most popular version of nVidia's GeForce 6 family of products - maybe because of the poor chip yields.
 Gigabyte 6800 - In Solid Copper Flavor
The performance tests were a mixed bag of treats, to say the least. There were times, usually at lower resolutions without AA and AF settings turned on, that Gigabyte's 6800 took the lead. More notably, Chaintech's AA6800 and ATI's X800 Pro were back and forth with each other. ATI's X800 Pro managed to be quite a performer at higher resolutions with AA and AF settings turned on. The stable performance could be backed up by an additional 128MB on-board memory along with higher clock speeds.
It is amazing to see how much a 10 percent overclock can do to performance. In many cases, Chaintech's AA6800 card scored twice as many frame rates as Gigabyte's 6800, but there's still good news for Gigabyte. If a 10 percent overclock can almost double the performance, imagine the performance boost at 25 percent higher clock speeds.
Gigabyte's 6800 card did manage to get playable scores in almost all performance tests, however, we believe that image quality will not improve significantly at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF settings. In our opinion, the textures have been reduced so much that it is tough to notice serious jaggedness. Of course at lower resolutions, such as 1024x768, it is almost necessary to turn on both AA and AF for high image quality and in that case, you will not notice an enormous drop in performance. The performance of this card is not too poor and certainly expected from a low-end position.
Gigabyte, as always, has paid close attention to the accessories to sweeten the value. We are very much delighted to see some wonderful game additions in the package along with Cyberlink's PowerDVD software. Not to mention the other accessories you get such as DVI adapter for digital video throughput.
The most impressive part about the card has to be its overclocking potential. It is excellent to gain 25 percent clock speeds than their specified ratings. This card can easily compete against its mid-end predecessor, 6800 GT, in performance, but the only thing it will have to face is the lack of 16 versus 12 pixel pipelines, and 128MB versus 256MB memory differences.
We found this card to be as low as $288, which makes it a more than desirable choice for users on a budget. While the stock performance of the card is not as impressive as one would achieve from its higher performing predecessors, we believe its justifiable considering its price, package value, and its overclocking potential.
If you are looking for something that will fit your limited budget and perform higher than its market value, we suggest giving Gigabyte's 6800: In Solid Copper Flavor a serious consideration.
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