Board analysis

Top of the EVGA GeForce 6800

Bottom of the card

Throughout their history EVGA has enjoyed a very close relationship with NVIDIA. EVGA is one of NVIDIA’s Tier One board partners, getting supplies of hardware before many other manufacturers. EVGA has then used their extensive distribution channels to secure placement in traditional brick and mortar retail outlets such as Circuit City and Office Depot, as well as online retailers like Newegg and Zipzoomfly.

In order to bring their products to market as quickly as possible with competitive pricing, EVGA frequently purchases their cards directly from NVIDIA. While NVIDIA requires this on their high-end GeForce 6800 Ultra cards, at the mainstream level the GeForce 6800 sells for board manufacturers have the option of purchasing the completed cards from NVIDIA, or buying the GeForce 6800 GPUs from NVIDIA, and producing the final 6800 cards on their own. Since EVGA chose the first method, their e-GeForce 6800 card is pretty much as close as you can get to purchasing the card directly from NVIDIA themselves.

Physically, the only modification EVGA makes to their e-GeForce 6800 board is cosmetic – the EVGA sticker located directly above the fan’s motor – other than this small change, the e-GeForce 6800 is identical to NVIDIA’s reference design.

MSI GeForce 6800 uses same cooling as 6600 GT

While the EVGA card borrows GeForce 6800 GT cooling

Our favorite aspect of EVGA’s e-GeForce 6800 is its cooling. As you can see in the pictures, EVGA relies on the same GeForce 6800 GT cooler for their e-GeForce 6800. In order to cut costs, some of NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 board partners have elected to use the GeForce 6600 GT heatsink/fan unit on their GeForce 6800 cards. Since the GeForce 6800 contains fewer pipelines and runs at lower clock speeds than the GeForce 6800 GT and 6800 Ultra GPUs, board partners are free to use the 6600 GT cooler on their GeForce 6800 cards.

The 6600 GT cooler is much smaller than the 6800 GT unit EVGA uses on their e-GeForce 6800. With more surface area, the EVGA cooler is able to more effectively draw heat off the GPU than the cooler used on other competing GeForce 6800 cards. This is an important consideration to keep in mind if you plan on overclocking your graphics card, or you’re concerned about board temperature.

Software and accessories

To keep costs down, EVGA ships their boards without a game bundle. After all, most gamers probably have the games they want to play anyway. Instead EVGA includes a driver CD with trial software on it, DVI and power cables, and an S-Video cable.