Inno3D GeForce 6800 GS Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

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GeForce 6800GS
Inno3D
Inno3D
USD250 / RM950

Back in October 2004, we reviewed Inno3D 6800GT which was a very powerful graphics card at a reasonable price. While the 6800GT gained instant popularity up to early 2005, NVIDIA announced their latest GeForce 7800 series with the GeForce 7800GTX outperforming every single graphics card at that time. After sometime, NVIDIA released the GeForce 7800GT which was priced about the same as a GeForce 6800GT when it was first released. This resulted in price cuts on previous GeForce 6800 graphics cards, including the 6800GT. In the past few months, NVIDIA's closest rival, ATI announced their Radeon X1000 series which includes X1800, X1600 and X1300 graphics card. The Radeon X1600XT was targeted towards mid-end range and it threatened the GeForce 6800GT as with the Radeon X800XL. To counteract this issue, NVIDIA silently released their GeForce 6800XT but it only offered slight improvements over the successful GeForce 6600GT. Besides, GeForce 6800XT graphics cards were rare and were sold in limited quantities. Fortunately, NVIDIA came up with a quick solution and released yet another amazing graphics card, which is the GeForce 6800GS. In this review, we will take a look at Inno3D GeForce 6800GS 256MB PCI-E x16 graphics card.

Specifications

Graphics Controller:

NVIDIA?GeForce?6800 GS

Memory Configuration:

256-bit 256MB GDDR3 Memory

Product Overview:

Powered by NVIDIA?GeForce?6800 GS GPU
12 Pixels/Clock Rendering Pipeline
High-Speed 256-bit GDDR Memory
Full-Speed 32-Bit Color Precision
PCI-Express interface
NVIDIA?SLi?Ready (For PCI-Express version only)
NVIDIA?CineFX?3.0 engine
NVIDIA?UltraShadow?II technology
NVIDIA?Intellisample?3.0 technology
DirectX?9.0 Shader Model 3.0 support
NVIDIA?High-Precision Dynamic-Range (HPDR) technology
NVIDIA?ForceWare?Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
NVIDIA?nView?multi-display technology
NVIDIA?Digital Vibrance Control?3.0
400MHz RAMDACs supports 2048x1536 resolution at 85Hz
Highest DVI output up to 1600x1200 resolution
128-bit studio-precision computation
Integrated full MPEG encode and decode support
Integrated NTSC/PAL TV encoder up to 1024*768 resolution
Integrated HDTV encoder provides world-class HDTV-out functionality up to 1920x1080i resolutions (Optional)
DirectX 9c and OpenGL 1.5 optimizations and support

Package

Just like most Inno3D graphics cards we have reviewed in the past, the GeForce 6800GS comes in a similar package. The graphics design on the package is not catchy as their GeForce 6800GT and the package does not have any ?see-through windows?to show the powerhouse inside. Anyways if you are going to buy this graphics card, is the content that matters the most. As shown in the picture, we received a pair of Inno3D GeForce 6800GS, which means we will be teaming them up for some SLI action.

Inside the package, a thin sponge is used to protect the graphics card from shipping damage and the graphics card itself sits inside an anti-static bag. We conducted a shake tests before popping open the package and found that the contents had a lot of free movement, which is not good for your graphics card. Although both of our samples worked flawlessly, it would be better if Inno3D could put a bit more attention to the packaging and perhaps add a few more layers of padding to prevent from possible shipping damages. Besides the graphics card, the package includes a standard user's guide, installation disk and a full version of Colin McRae Rally 04 disk. Then, there's also the HDTV-out dongle, S-VIDEO cable, DVI-VGA converter and the package also comes with a 4-pins to 6-pins PCI-E power converter for users with older power supplies without 6-pin PCI-E connector.



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