The cards

GeForce 6800 Ultra (Extreme)

The Extreme 6800 Ultra board looks just like the 6800 Ultra reference card we received a few weeks ago. The board sports the same dual-slot cooler that we found does an effective job of keeping the graphics core and memory cool thanks to its heat pipe cooling and large aluminum heatsink, although the fan itself is a little louder than ATI’s RADEON X800 PRO/XT and RADEON 9800 XT cards.

The GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme reference design

We wouldn’t be surprised to see NVIDIA’s board partners implement their own coolers on their second generation 6800 Ultra boards, it’s also possible that they may decide to lower the RPMs on final boards by a level or two, as the board itself runs quite cool in comparison to previous high-end DX9 offerings from both ATI and NVIDIA, even when the Extreme board is overclocked beyond default levels of 450/550.

NVIDIA paired our GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme board with Samsung GDDR3 modules that were rated for 600MHz, and it certainly showed in our overclocking attempts as we were able to hit a maximum of 1.255GHz effective. The graphics core topped out at 475MHz, an increase of 25MHz over default.

Second DVI transmitter went here on the A01 board

Same old beefy cooling

Taking a closer look at the board we see that the board layout is nearly identical to GeForce 6800 Ultra. The board rev on our GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme board is A02 versus A01 on our original GeForce 6800 Ultra card (the NV40 reference boards are designated P201 internally by NVIDIA). Power circuitry is the same on both revs, although the second DVI transmitter on the underside of the original A01 GeForce 6800 Ultra reference board is notably absent on the newer A02 Extreme card. NVIDIA’s feature connector has also been removed from the top of the A02 board.

Note the double stack PCI bracket on the A02 6800 Ultra Extreme

Finally, you can also see that the PCI bracket is double-stack again, just like on GeForce FX 5900/5950 Ultra. Some enthusiasts actually preferred the single-stack design on the A01 6800 Ultra reference board, as you could use the second slot for additional expansion options like a USB header or the digital audio headers that ship with most motherboards without wasting a third PCI slot. Therefore, it would be nice to see the single-slot PCI bracket work its way back into the mix again on retail GeForce 6800 Ultra and GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme boards.

Since this is merely a 50MHz clock frequency increase, the power requirements of GeForce FX 6800 Ultra Extreme are similar to GeForce 6800 Ultra. If you recall correctly, NVIDIA recommends a 480-watt power supply for the GeForce 6800 Ultra, but as we mentioned in our GeForce 6800 Ultra Performance Preview, this is largely to ensure that there’s enough power on the 12V rail for both the graphics card and processor. NVIDIA felt 480 watts was a good cutoff point for both generic and high-grade power supply units, but there are a number of high quality power supplies that provide adequate power on the 12V rail that are in the 350-430 watt range.