Unreal Tournament 2004

The newer, bigger, better, version of Unreal Tournament contains quite a bit more eye-candy than its previous version. UT2004 is also a D3D game by default and was run at max detail. With high quality settings the 6800 has trouble keeping up.

Call of Duty

Tests were run using the latest patched version (1.4) at maximum detail. Call of Duty uses a highly modified Quake3 engine at it's core and runs on OpenGL. The game mainly pushes high res textures and doesn't have all the wiz-bang effects of today's newer games. Another impressive showing by the 6800, especially at 1600x1200.

Quake3

This is the oldest test I use. The more power you throw at Q3 the higher the FPS it will pump out. This is a raw throughput power test here, folks. That same trend continues from earlier. Even with its older and lower clocked RAM, the 6800 is able to consistently beat out the X800 in this test.

Conclusion

The X800 and the 6800 both have their strengths in different games and even in different settings within certain games. Despite the use of DDR instead of GDDR3 RAM the PX6800 is able to strongly compete with the X800 and in about half of the tests it bests the X800. The two cards both are great performers overall. While testing both cards and overclocking them the X800 was able to crash more gracefully by simply closing the game you were playing and notifying you of the problem. The Nvidia card would simply lock up. The X800 also had a smaller footprint overall. If you were to ask me, "Which one should I buy?" I would then ask you, "Do you plan on going SLI?". If you don't plan on investing in an SLI setup then I would suggest the X800 since you can currently find it for about $30 cheaper if you really hunt around for good prices plus it is a bit smaller and felt more stable when experimenting with overclocking. If you are going to give SLI a shot or are even considering that option then the 6800 is the way to go for sure. You can find the Leadtek PX6800 TDH 256MB PCIe video card for about $350.00. Since the PX6800 has the option for the budding SLI technology it deserves a little more in the ratings. I give the Leadtek PX6800 TDH 9.5 pimp hats and award it the We Pimp Gear Award.

I will soon update this article with a follow up testing of these cards in a SLI configuration so keep an eye out for news of that soon.

Pimpin'
- 256MB of DDR RAM
- 12 pixel pumping pipelines
- Good game bundle
- Outstanding performance overall
- Near top tier performance without the top tier price
- No external power connector needed
- Very quiet
- HDTV Output

Gimpin'
- No Dual DVI output.
- No RAM sinks

Rating 

(9.5 pimp hats)

Thanks go out to Leadtek for providing the review samples and to Tiger Direct for arranging the review.