Introduction

GeForce 6800 Ultra and X800 XT PE cards

The Leadtek and GeForce 6800U reference board

Leadtek and X800 XT PE cards

Typically when an independent hardware vendor (IHV) like ATI or NVIDIA releases a new GPU, innovation among their board partners is pretty scarce – everyone relies on the reference design. This is caused by a couple of factors:

The most important reason is also the simplest – both IHVs handle all board production on the first generation of their high-end $400+ graphics cards. This means that regardless of the manufacturer you choose, the card itself has come from the same source. NVIDIA has relied on Flextronics in the past while ATI has partnered with PC Partner (Sapphire), although in the case of X800 we’ve heard they’ve switched to Celestica.

Another shot of the NVIDIA cards

Leadtek compared to the X800 XT Platinum

This development began in the GeForce3 days and was magnified in the GeForce4 era. Graphics board designs became more complicated with these cards, GeForce4 Ti 4400/Ti 4600’s required six-layer printed circuit boards (PCBs) with high-speed BGA DDR memory. NVIDIA also wanted to ensure a consistent level of quality among their board partners after receiving a spate of complaints from TNT2/GeForce users who had purchased cards from lesser-known manufacturers; these consumers would sometimes turn around and blame NVIDIA.

Slowly but surely, NVIDIA became less focused on solely providing chips (leaving all production-related issues to their board partners), and more of a quasi-card manufacturer. You can even see this in older press releases, where NVIDIA would provide bulk pricing for their graphics chips. Imagine an NVIDIA press release today with this kind of information for GeForce 6800 Ultra!

Speaking of the GeForce 6800 Ultra, these are some of the most complex boards to manufacture in the graphics market. The power requirements and cooling required for these GPUs are well documented, as is the 6800 Ultra’s GDDR3 memory clocked at 1.1GHz. We’ve also heard that NVIDIA uses 12-layer PCBs for the Ultra due to its high clock speeds.

Designing and then manufacturing a board as intricate as this is expensive, time-consuming work. With board partners already in a race with each other to get their boards to market first, there just isn’t enough time to come up with a custom board design, not to mention the fact that many board partners simply don’t have the resources to pull it all off successfully.

Instead, board partners will focus on other things, such as game bundles, or providing extra features like faster memory, better cooling, or video input support (VIVO). Each company will find their niche and focus on it, with their goal being to provide the best possible experience for their core audience.

Same board design, different coolers

Leadtek has dual slot cooling

Leadtek caters to the high-end enthusiast, the guy who wants the Ferrari of graphics cards. Stock designs aren’t enough for Leadtek’s engineers, who are constantly seeking to improve on NVIDIA’s hardware. This is a pretty tall order to accomplish in today’s cutthroat market, but Leadtek has managed to do just that. Their GeForce 5900 Ultra card we reviewed last year featured an effective copper-based cooler with a ducted enclosure, while their GeForce 5900 XT card we reviewed in our 5900 XT roundup shipped with 2.2ns Hynix memory, good for 900MHz. We received emails from many of you that purchased that board based on our article and got 2.2ns boards.

For GeForce 6800 Ultra, Leadtek has once again chosen to deviate from other NVIDIA board partners with their GeForce 6800 Ultra card. Rather than cut and paste NVIDIA’s reference card, Leadtek has come up with something a little more unique than the other first generation GeForce 6800 Ultra cards.