Board analysis

The Gigabyte GV-N68U256D card

Back of the card

At first glance, Gigabyte’s GV-N68U256D looks like your typical GeForce 6800 Ultra reference card. But as we’re about to show you, it’s what’s inside that counts.

The GV-N68U256D starts life out like other GeForce 6800 Ultra cards in the sense that not only does it follow NVIDIA’s reference design, it’s literally manufactured directly by NVIDIA. Currently all GeForce 6800 Ultra cards share the same basic components, right down to the plain green PCB NVIDIA uses. Board partners can then customize their offerings with special cooling, or a unique software bundle.

In the past, NVIDIA has provided strict guidelines on clock speeds that board partners such as Gigabyte must adhere to. NVIDIA wanted to ensure a consistent level of quality on their high-end boards, regardless of manufacturer. This is also why they decided to take over production of these cards. For GeForce 6800 however, this appears to have changed, as multiple board partners have announced GeForce 6800, 6800 GT, and 6800 Ultra cards that run at clock speeds that are higher than the stock, reference clocks for the graphics core and memory. Gigabyte clocks their GV-N68U256D graphics core at 425MHz by default. This is an improvement of 25MHz, improving fill rate from 6.4Gigatexels/second to 6.8Gigatexels/second. Memory frequency remains at 550MHz (1.1GHz effective), the same speed as a stock GeForce 6800 Ultra.

NVIDIA dual slot cooling

Aluminum heatsink cools core and memory

Other than the core clock frequency boost, the GV-N68U256D is unchanged from NVIDIA’s reference board. The GV-N68U256D is outfitted with the same dual-slot cooler we’ve seen on other GeForce 6800 Ultra cards. Gigabyte’s website pictures the GV-N68U256D with a copper cooling system, but our board (and the 6800 Ultra card we saw at Computex) relies on aluminum instead.

As a 6800 Ultra, Gigabyte’s GV-N68U256D sports dual DVI connections and requires two Molex connectors to operate properly. If the card’s power connections aren’t properly connected, you’ll know it – every GeForce 6800 Ultra ships with a small speaker. This speaker will dish out the most ear shattering noise we’ve ever heard from a PC if the card doesn’t receive enough juice.

You can see the dual Molex connectors and speakers here

Besides the GV-N68U256D card, Gigabyte also throws in standard hardware accessories like an S-Video cable and two DVI adapters, as well a copy of PowerDVD 5.0, Novalogic’s Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising, a game which was just released in June of this year, and Thief: Deadly Shadows, which is another brand new title. Not bad at all!