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1. Introduction

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2. Features

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Asus Extreme N6800GT - 02 - Features

Main Features
GPU	Nvidia 6800 - NV40 rev.A1
Memory Type	256 MB 256-bit GDDR3
Engine Clock Speed	350MHz
Memory Clock Speed	500MHz
Memory Bandwidth	32.0 GB/sec
Pixel Pipelines	16
Vertex Pipelines	6
Fill rate	5.6 Giga pixels /sec
DX Support	9.0
OpenGL Support	1.5
Output	Dual DVI-I
Bus	PCI-Express 16x
Processing technology	0.13 micron

The Extreme N6800GT uses the same processor as an 6800 Ultra based card, codenamed NV40. The major differences between the two references are summarized in the following table:

-	6800 GT	6800 Ultra
Engine Clock Speed	350MHz	400MHz
Memory Clock Speed	500MHz	550MHz
Memory Bandwidth	32.0 GB/sec	35.2 GB/sec
Fill rate	5.6 Giga pixels /sec	6.4 Giga pixels /sec

The lower Memory Bandwidth and Fill Rate of the 6800GT is a direct result of its lower clock frequencies. In other words, should you be able to clock the GT card to Ultra speeds without overheating it, the performance would get very close to that of an Ultra card.

Both the GT and Ultra have a 16 pixel and 6 vertex pipeline architecture which is the highest number you will encounter in a graphics card until the next generation cards arrive.

Of course, the GT uses a 256 bit memory interface and is equipped with 256MB of GDDR3 RAM. It will take a while until 512MB cards storm the market as there's currently no game that makes use of so much memory (Doom3 doesn't count as the Ultra details that require 512MB offer no extra image quality).

ASUS Features:
SLI Multi-GPU ready: Dramatically scales performance by allowing two graphics cards to run in parallel.
ASUS GameFace™ Live: The World's first multiplayer audio and video chatting solution for PC games. It enables simultaneous connection up to 8 players.
ASUS Video Security™ Online: Whether you're online or not, ASUS VideoSecurity Online provides you a flexible and economical security system. It can easily turn your computer into your own security server.
Diversified displays connectivity (Dual DVI, Dual VGA, DVI+VGA, DVI+TV-out)
High-quality TV output for big screen gaming or presentations

Graphics Chip Key Features:
Superscalar GPU architecture - Delivers up to 8x the shading power of previous generation products for sreaming gaming performance.
NVIDIA® CineFX™ 3.0 engine
Shader model 3.0 support enables stunning and complex special effects
High-Speed GDDR3 memory interface
NVIDIA UltraShadow™ II technology - Enhances the performance of bleeding-edge games
NVIDIA High-Precision Dynamic-Range (HPDR) technology - NVIDIA HPDR sets new standards for image clarity and quality through floating point capabilities in shading, filtering, texturing, and blending.
NVIDIA® Intellisample™ 3.0 technology
The industry's fastest antialiasing delivers ultra-realistic visuals, with no jagged edges, at lightning-fast speeds
NVIDIA nVIEW Multi-display technology
Advanced technology provides the ultimate in viewing flexibility and control for multiple monitors.

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3. A closer look

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4. Test System

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5. 3DMark05

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6. 3DMark 2003

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Asus Extreme N6800GT - 06 - 3DMark 2003

3D Mark is a widely used and accepted benchmark that stresses the DirectX performance of a VGA card. A very strong point of 3DMark is that it's VGA card measuring is does not require any CPU power. So the resulting fps are a good reference a VGA card's rendering performance. For testing the performance of each card we used the 4 game benchmarks 3DMark has.

3Dmark03 also includes sound and CPU tests as well as some other feature tests.

- Game Test 1 - Wings of Fury (DX7)

This test is a combat flight simulator written for older hardware (DirectX 7). Particles are used a lot in this test - smoke and vapor trails, flak and gunfire, and explosions are produced using point sprites and quads.

- Game Test 2 - Battle of Proxycon (DX8)

This test is a simulation of first person shooter game types. 1.1 and 1.4 Vertex shaders are widely used since all character models are skinned using vertex shaders.This makes this test a good vertex shader comparison for VGA cards.

- Game Test 3 - Trolls' Lair (DX8)

This test should be the favorite of all RPG lovers. It is a cut scene of a female warrior facing two malicious trolls. Again the same vertex and pixel processing is used as in game test 2.

- Game Test 4 - Mother Nature (DX9)

Mother nature represents the level of effects and realism that are possible using 2.0 vertex and pixel shaders, plus some other features that DirectX 9 offers.

The first 3 game tests show excellent results for the N6800GT, as its performance is very close to the X850XT. On the last game however, which uses a DX9 path, the later outperformed the 6800GT by almost 20fps.

- 3DMark Official score

If you test your machine with 3DMark, you can post the results at 3DMark's online result browser. For more information visit futuremark.com.

The final score for the Asus Extreme N6800GT is 11181, just 1000 3dmarks behind the top performer, the X850XT from Club 3D.

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7. Codecreatures

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CodeCreatures is a synthetic 3D benchmark that is a good reference for VGA performance comparison. This is a high-end 3D benchmark that also requires DirectX 8 hardware, making a good tool for measuring the potential of DirectX 8 game performance.

The Codecreatures benchmark is written with Microsoft's DirectX 8.1 API and incorporates the use of Vertex and PixelShaders popular on next generation 3D accelerators.

The benchmark plays a photo-realistic nature scene and calculates the performance of the graphics adapter by measuring the fps that it can display at 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 resolutions.

 

 

-Codecreatures number

The codecreatures number is the resulting score of the total benchmarking process and is basically the geometric mean of the three framerates multiplied by 100.

The difference in Codecreatures performance is very small and a potential overclock on the 6800GT would decrease it even further.

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8. Aquamark3 / 3DMark 2001

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9. Half life 2

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10. Doom 3

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11. Far Cry

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Asus Extreme N6800GT - 11 - Far Cry

You are Jack Carver running your own boat charter business in beautiful Micronesia. With a past best left behind you, you'll be focusing on your present assignment: escorting an ambitious journalist named Valerie Cortez to the Island of Cabatu. It seems like a piece of cake, but you'll soon learn: paradise can be hell.

Farcry is an awesome First Person Shooter (FPS) based on a last generation 3D engine named as CryEngine. Real-time editing, bump-mapping, static lights, network system, integrated physics system, shaders, shadows and a dynamic music system are just some of the state of-the-art features that the CryEngine offers.

A great advantage and strong point of the CryEngine is its physics system which supports character inverse kinematics, vehicles, rigid bodies, liquid, rag doll, cloth and body effects. All physics seem to be very realistic and you never get bored when facing enemies, since character models have multiple animations that blend in believable ways.

With an integrated shader system and a massive terrain which maximizes the view distance to 2km, these features make Farcry a perfect action game and also a referable benchmark to speak of.

- Benchmark Settings

For this game we recorded a custom demo from the start of the Rebellion stage. We chose an indoor scene in order to avoid getting the CPU bound effect. This will result in slightly higher results since it is also less GPU intensive, but we can't afford being stuck at 40-50 fps because of our CPU.

The latest patch (1.3) was used for our tests which updates the game's graphics engine to use the 3.0 Shader model. This option is only supported for the 6800 series.

The resolutions we ran the demo under, are as follows: 800x600,1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. The first test was committed with Anti Aliasing (AA) and Anisotropic Filtering (AF) features off. In the second test we leveled up AA to 4x and AF to 8x. All tests were taken with Jack's flashlight on, to increase the game's demands from the graphics cards and with ai_update_interval set to zero so that the results are unbiased.

In Far Cry, the N6800GT starts with 91fps under 1024x768 and falls to 50fps under 1600x1200. These are excellent results but that might change when we switch to 4xAA and 8xAF.

As foretold, the framerate for the N6800GT under 1600x1200 drops to 36fps. Unfortunately, as this number is just an average of the in-game fps, this is not acceptable as the actual framerate is smaller at some points of the benchmark. However, the N6800GT provides smooth gameplay at the 1280x1024 resolution.

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12. Thief 3

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Asus Extreme N6800GT - 12 - Thief 3

Instead of Deus Ex from now on we'll be testing our cards using Thief 3. It's based on the same engine but it's much less GPU intensive and playable by more VGA cards than Deus.

The game makes severe use of Pixel Shader 1.1 instructions, the bloom effect and stencil shadows to achieve a wonderful result in your screen.

In the game you play the part of Master Thief Garrett who is back to rule out any evil forces using his unique stealth abilities. Deadly Shadows shows what stealth gameplay is all about. This game really gives you the feel of sneaking around and holding your breath when stuck in a sticky situation.

Since there is no official benchmark for the game, we'll do our tests using a GPU intensive scene from the tutorial-level which we believe that represents the average fps you'll get when playing the game.

 

 

 

Just as in the the case of the X850XT, the N6800GT is also CPU-bound with the first three resolutions as Thief 3 DS is an incredibly demanding game for both the GPU and CPU. The N6800GT starts off pretty well with 45 frames per second but when increasing the resolution to 1600x1200, the framerate becomes unacceptable.

When enabling Multisampling through the game menu and Anisotropic Filtering through the drivers menu, the framerates are almost halved. If you really feel like increasing the image quality of the game, it seems 800x600 is the only resolution that the card can handle satisfactorily.

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13. Colin McRae 05

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14. Ground Control II

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Asus Extreme N6800GT - 14 - Ground Control II

Ground Control 2 is an action-oriented game of tactics and warfare. As Captain Jacob Angelus of the Northern Star Alliance, you will command squads of infantry, artillery, and airpower against the might of the Empire of Terra. Base building and resource-collecting are replaced with unit control and combat tactics where your knowledge of the battlefield maneuvers will make the difference in your fight against a ruthless enemy. Position your troops on hilltops for better aim or inside buildings and forests for protection as you'll need to use every inch of terrain to your advantage. Call in air strikes or assault pods to bring the battle behind enemy lines. Send out scouts to locate the enemy and use spotters for your artillery with the 360° free-roaming camera. Experience the total immersion of futuristic warfare as you lead your forces to victory!

 

For our benchmarks, we used the highest possible settings on the first mission of the single player game and moved around the camera to get an average framerate using fraps.

Ground Control II offers really impressive graphics without requiring much GPU power. Click on the picture above to view a screenshot from the game. Check out these excellent water effects!

 

All cards performed equally well at GCII. The N6800GT performance-wise, stands between the X850XT and 6600GT once more, but all three graphics cards are able to run the game flawlessly.

The N6800GT has the power to deliver 37fps under 1280x1024, but if we increase the resolution further when the screen gets crowded with enemies, it will result in a drop in the framerate to a lower level, distorting the gameplay's smoothness. Hence, 1280x1024 is the best setting if you want to enjoy this game.

 

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15. Overclocking

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Asus Extreme N6800GT - 15 - Overclocking

No matter your graphics card, there comes a time in your computer's life when it can no longer cope with the latest technology the ever so popular games use. This is one of the main reasons for overclocking your graphics card. Gamers are always looking forward for a little extra boost in terms of framerate. Even though most of the times the boost is far from noticeable, overclocking remains the last resort when you can't afford to buy a brand new VGA card.

Increasing the memory clock too much, produces the so-called "artifacts".

The stock clock speeds for the Extreme N6800GT are 350MHz for the GPU and 520MHz for the memory modules. Our purpose was to overclock the card to 6800Ultra speeds, which are 400MHz and 550MHz respectively. Unfortunately, this couldn't be accomplished.

Although the GPU could handle the 410MHz we were able to set it to, the new HSF that cools the card was a major constraint for the memory clock speed and the highest stable setting we reached was 520MHz. When we tried setting it a little bit higher, it would produce artifacts, sometimes immediately and other times after stress testing the card with games.

Even if we failed to overclock the card up to an Ultra, the impact in Doom 3 and Half Life 2 performance is exciting. Far Cry on the other hard showed very small differences with a 2-4 fps boost.

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16. Conclusion

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Asus Extreme N6800GT - 16 - Conclusion

Although the N6800GT did not seem to excel in the majority of the benchmarks against the enthusiast X850XT, its performance is still over-the-top when compared to the 6600GT with large framerate differences between them. Let's also not forget that the X850XT is the flagship of ATi at the moment while the N6800GT is a more budget oriented but still high-end card.

If you're looking for a high end graphics card upgrade but you're not willing to waste $700 out of your budget for an 6800Ultra or X850XT, surely the $500 the 6800GT costs is a far more reasonable price.

Overclocking was a bit disappointing since we failed to clock the card to Ultra speeds, but even so the performance boost we got was more than satisfactory.

The EN6800GT offers one of the most complete software bundles and accessories. Inside the package you'll find all needed accessories for connecting your video card with external devices, a game, applications, a portable CD case and even a webcam that you can use with Asus GameFace. However, the game chosen could be much better than Joint Operations or at least another game should accompany the card. In which case the bundle would be simply excellent.

Pros:
-High performance
-Great bundle
-Low noise fan
-Takes up only one PCI-E slot

Cons:
-Memory couldn't overclock stably at Ultra speeds.

Performance:
Value for money:
Overclocking:
Bundle: