Introduction

Two GTs and an X800 PRO

NVIDIA reference 6800 GT up top, and the PNY GeForce 6800 GT on bottom

While we all dream of owning high-end hardware like the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition and Athlon 64 FX, budget constraints often prevent these dreams from becoming a reality. After all, not everyone has the luxury to fork over $500 or $600 for the latest hardware.

Fortunately there are lower priced alternatives that offer most of the performance these flagship products at much lower price points. On the graphics side, NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 GT is one such example.

Initially, NVIDIA had no such plans for the GeForce 6800 GT. Two GeForce 6800 SKUs were initially announced: the GeForce 6800 and GeForce 6800 Ultra. The announcement of ATI’s X800 PRO changed NVIDIA’s plans however. With its $400 price point, the X800 PRO sat right between the GeForce 6800 (at $300) and the GeForce 6800 Ultra, which was priced at $500. To fill this hole, NVIDIA concocted the GeForce 6800 GT.

As you probably know by now, the GeForce 6800 GT gives up little to the 6800 Ultra from a features perspective. Both cards ship with 16 pipeline NV40 graphics cores with 256MB of GDDR3 memory, and of course both support shader model 3.0. The key differences are clock speeds, price, and power. The GeForce 6800 GT retails for $400 and only requires one Molex connector to operate. GeForce 6800 Ultra cards ship with two power connections and larger dual-slot cooling. This is because the GeForce 6800 Ultra runs at higher clock frequencies than the GeForce 6800 GT, 400MHz on the 6800 Ultra core versus 350MHz on 6800 GT, and 550MHz memory (1.1GHz effective) for the Ultra versus 500MHz (1.0GHz effective) for the GT.

PNY GeForce 6800 GT and eVGA GeForce 6800 Ultra

Identical board designs

While the GeForce 6800 GT shipped after ATI’s X800 PRO, it has already gained a huge following among enthusiasts. In fact, a lot of gamers have already hailed it as the “next GeForce4 Ti 4200”! Technically this is a mischaracterization as the Ti 4200 was always a mainstream card with a $200 price point: at best you may be able to find a GeForce 6800 GT online for $380, a price which is hardly mainstream. A more accurate analogy would be the GeForce4 Ti 4400, a card which was also respected back in its day.

PNY was one of the first NVIDIA board partners with a GeForce 6800 GT card to hit retail, a trait which is important when a GPU is first announced, as early adopters tend to gobble up boards quicker than you can sell them. Their Verto GeForce 6800 GT is designed to appeal to the gamer or hardware enthusiast who wants a high performing graphics card with solid reliability. Of course, it also doesn’t hurt that these cards are aggressively priced and can be found online and at stores like Best Buy, Fry’s, Circuit City, and CompUSA. Let’s see what PNY offers with their Verto GeForce 6800 GT card.