Installation & Impressions

Home sweet home! Looks great sitting in there. We built this rig just for this occasion. Anyone notice the 80mm fan grills? Lol. Okay, well they look cool anyway! We acquired one of those modular power supply's from Antec called the Antec Neo Power 480watt. While NVIDIA recommends a high performing 350watt, we want more power!

Oh yeah those fans are from A.C. Ryan They allowed us to sample some product just for this review. Check em out, they got great products! Once powering up the system the GeForce 6800 Ultra PCX will spool up its fan at max RPM until POST is over, once the BIOS starts loading hardware the GPU spools down to a more pleasing level of RPM's.

"Demand for GeForce 6800 Ultra has been very high. We are shipping GPU's in volume and our add-in-card partners are shipping boards as fast as they can build them."

NVIDIA

At first glance we see that ever enchanting SLI connector that NVIDIA fans are dreaming to have part of there next system. NVIDIA did not feel the need to protect the heavily populated back side of the PCB. I dare to say that while this is fine and don't pose a problem, there will be those who will tinker around and end up shorting the board out if one is not careful. I for one as a hardware analyst often get in the habit of hot swapping and I do feel complacent technicians or enthusiasts could end up causing damage if do care is not exercised.

With full 32-bit floating point support through the entire pipeline, the GeForce 6 Series GPU's power cinematic-quality images with full 128-bit color at stunning visual detail. While this detail is the core of the 3D experience the heat generated is also a issue. The GeForce 6800 Ultra PCX has a heavy duty HSF consisting of copper clad base with integrated aluminum body and SECC steel memory heat sinks and a powerful impeller design fan system.