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BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB Review May 16, 2005 Chris Crazipper Angelini |
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Summary: At CeBIT this year NVIDIA announced the GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB, promising “new levels of performance and visual quality”. Today we're taking a look at one of the first GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB cards to hit the market, BFG's GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB. The card not only ships with 512MB of memory, but like the rest of the "OC" lineup of BFG cards, faster than stock clock speeds. With two BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB cards in our hands, we took the 512MB GeForce 6800 Ultra card out for a spin in both single-card and SLI 512MB configurations, comparing it to GeForce 6800 Ultra, the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition, and finally, ATI's recently announced 512MB RADEON X800 XL. Do twin 512MB GeForce 6800 Ultras sound exciting to you? See the performance improvements 512MB brings to the GeForce 6800 Ultra inside!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 15 ) |
More recently, we saw the first 512MB graphics cards in ATI’s PCI Express RADEON X800 XL. It’s an impressive piece of work by most accounts; however, the extra performance afforded by additional memory is offset by that product’s lower operating frequency compared to the X850 XT Platinum Edition. Half-Life 2 demonstrates the card’s alacrity to some degree, but I think it’s fair to say your money is better spent on a faster card instead of one with more memory.
What happens, though, when you combine a super-fast graphics processor and an extra-large frame buffer? After all, both ATI’s X800-class and NVIDIA’s GeForce 6-series architectures support 512MB memory capacities. ATI first demonstrated 512MB on a RADEON X850 XT board, suggesting it’d pursue the high-end with great memory capacity. ATI later revealed it’d instead arm its X800 XL with 512MB and shoot for a lower price point. In response, NVIDIA announced plans to introduce a 512MB GeForce 6800 Ultra, heralding a new flagship theoretically capable of besting every other card on the market. It employs the same 130nm manufacturing process and even runs at the same frequency. The real issue here is memory capacity.
BFG’s GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB
Even if the 512MB GeForce 6800 Ultra is an over-the-bow response to ATI’s own 512MB salvo, there’s no denying the card’s supremacy from a specification sheet point of view. BFG wasted no time in packaging and marketing the board, adding its own touches to what is otherwise an NVIDIA reference design.
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Physically, the 512MB model differs from 256MB 6800 Ultra boards in that it is longer and includes some extra power circuitry, much of which is covered by a secondary passive heatsink. It employs the same six-pin power input you’d expect on any other high-end PCI Express graphics card, and the board sports a very similar active cooler for its graphics processor. Interestingly, only half of the onboard memory modules are blanketed with aluminum RAM-sinks. The other eight 1.6ns modules run bare.
| More BFG 6800 Ultra 512MB | Page:: ( 2 / 15 ) |
Naturally, the card’s core specifications remain unchanged. It wields 16 parallel pixel pipelines, Shader Model 3.0 compliance, and PureVideo technology. Absolutely nothing is different about the graphics processor itself. Memory is one of only two variables here.
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| GeForce 6800 Ultra Comparison | ||||
| Card | Core Clock Speed (MHz) | Memory Clock Speed (MHz) | Memory Size | MSRP |
| BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB | 425 | 525 | 512MB | $999 |
| BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 256MB | 425 | 550 | 256MB | $499 |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra reference | 400 | 550 | 256MB | $499 |
| BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC | 370 | 500 | 256MB | $399 |
| GeForce 6800 GT reference | 350 | 500 | 256MB | $399 |
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The idea is that anyone with enough money to buy one or two of these 512MB cards is also planning to use a nice display. Thankfully, BFG had the foresight to employ two, dual-link DVI connectors, each of which supports resolutions up to 2048x1536 at 85Hz. You’ll get away with up to 1920x 1080 at 60 Hz using the single-link port featured on 256MB Ultra cards. But if you really want to go big, Apple’s 30-inch Cinema HD display, for instance, requires a dual-link DVI output for operation (BFG’s product manager makes the clarification that the 30-inch Cinema HD is not supported in SLI mode, though). Previously, this was a feature only available on high-end Quadro cards, so including it with the GeForce 6800 Ultra is a big deal for graphics professionals.
Understanding that those improvements alone make it hard to stomach a $999 purchase, BFG bundles the card with a handful of value-added extras. There’s an 80mm case fan with blue LED lighting, Teflon pads for the bottom of your mouse, a t-shirt that lets everyone know you bought a 512MB graphics card, and a full copy of Far Cry. Though the bundle doesn’t make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, Far Cry is a great game and the other items are each useful in their own ways. Just don’t wear that t-shirt on a first date.
| SLI Widescreen Gaming and Overclocking | Page:: ( 3 / 15 ) |
What good is top of the line hardware if you can’t push it further than anyone else? It wasn’t too long ago that 1600x1200 was the absolute highest resolution anyone could imagine using to game. After all, most video cards still keel over when you add anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to such a high-end workload. Not the 6800 Ultra, though. We hooked a handful of cards up to our Dell 2405FPW wide-aspect LCD display and fired up Half-Life 2 and Far Cry at 1920x1200. Doom 3 was on the list too, but it topped out at 1600x1200, unfortunately.
Far Cry yields more of the same, except the jump is a staggering 63 percent improvement when you add SLI to the mix, making 1920x1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF a perfectly playable setting. It’s again unfortunate to see no gains from the extra memory, though.
Overclocking
Although BFG ships the GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics processor at an accelerated 425 MHz, it’s forced to relax the memory bus frequency somewhat due to the load of 512MB. The goal in overclocking was to overcome that 50 MHz drop to 1,050 MHz at the very least.
It was a pleasant surprise, then, that the board scaled right up to 470/1150 without any sign of instability in SLI mode, yielding 85.64 frames per second in Half-Life 2 at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF (at stock speeds, the card scores 81.21 frames). Doom 3 tops out at 75.9 frames, a minor jump compared to 75.2 for default settings.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 4 / 15 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (S939)
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
1GB Corsair CMX512-3200XLPRO (2x512MB)
BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB PCI Express x16
ASUS GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB PCI Express x16
ATI RADEON X850 XT 256MB Platinum Edition PCI Express x16
ATI RADEON X800 XL 512MB PCI Express x16
Detonator 76.50
Catalyst 5.4
34GB Western Digital Raptor (10,000RPM, 8MB cache)
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
DirectX 9.0c
Desktop resolution 1024x768, 32-bit color, 85Hz refresh
All power saving options were turned off, as were the Automatic Update and System Restore services. Graphics options under the ‘Performance’ tab were all disabled for maximum performance.
The NVIDIA drivers used in this story are beta software still. For one reason or another, the latest official build doesn’t cooperate with the 512MB graphics cards, yielding a blue screen each time Windows tries to boot. We’ve confirmed this issue with NVIDIA and identified two possible workarounds. The first is to revert to an older driver, from February, which doesn’t seem to take advantage of SLI in very many applications. This is the driver that BFG includes and it does function. Alternatively, these beta drivers also enable full functionality, plus they seem to sport better SLI compatibility and viable overclocking.
Benchmarks
Futuremark 3DMark05
id Software Doom 3 Demo Demo001
Crytek Far Cry v.1.3 Custom Demo
Valve Software Half-Life 2 Custom Demo
1C: Maddox Games Pacific Fighters vs: B-24 Demo
| 3DMark05 | Page:: ( 5 / 15 ) |
Futuremark 3DMark05
Notes
We ran this one in order to get our bearings on comparing the 512MB and 256MB Ultra cards with and without SLI technology. The results are taken at 1600x1200 to tax the graphics subsystem as much as possible. And interestingly enough, the slight loss of memory bandwidth actually puts the 512MB cards a tad behind the 256MB set. While we hesitate to make comparisons between ATI and NVIDIA products in a purely synthetic setting, it is surprising how much lower the 512MB X800 XL scores versus ATI’s X850 XT Platinum Edition product.
| Doom 3 | Page:: ( 6 / 15 ) |
id Software Doom 3
Notes
Doom 3 is NVIDIA’s playground and the GeForce 6800 Ultra dominates in a major way. At 1280x1024, there’s an imperceptible advantage tilted toward the 512MB variant. The gap persists at 1600x1200. Naturally, SLI helps, but arguably not enough to justify a second $1,000 graphics card.
| Doom 3 with 4xAA and 8xAF | Page:: ( 7 / 15 ) |
id Software Doom 3 with 4xAA and 8xAF
Notes
Even with the added intensity of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, BFG’s GeForce 6800 Ultra OC card isn’t able to put any appreciable space between itself and ASUS’ highly capable 256MB variant. What is worth mentioning, though, is that SLI allows both of the Ultra variants to play through Doom 3 at Ultra quality settings and with the graphics details enabled while continuing to crank out impressive frame rates. ATI’s lineup, on the other hand, lags a ways behind, especially at 1600x1200.
| Far Cry | Page:: ( 8 / 15 ) |
Crytek’s Far Cry
Notes
Most of the Far Cry tests fall within a margin of error for testing Far Cry, with the exception of that comparison at 1280x1024. Otherwise, there’s a reasonable gain to be had from SLI at 1600x1200 and very little advantage to using a 512MB GeForce 800 Ultra.
| Far Cry with 4xAA and 8xAF | Page:: ( 9 / 15 ) |
Crytek’s Far Cry with 4xAA and 8xAF
Notes
The difference between single-card and SLI configurations becomes more apparent with the application of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, but there’s still no improvement to be had by adopting the 512MB implementation. In fact, with either of the Ultras set up in a single-card setup ATI’s RADEON X850 XT PE is able to place first. Only with the application of SLI do the 6-series cards come out ahead. And again, there’s really little gain to be had here from buying a 512MB X800 XL board, it seems.
| Half-Life 2 | Page:: ( 10 / 15 ) |
Valve Software’s Half-Life 2
Notes
Not only does Half-Life 2 fail to benefit from 512MB of memory, it also shows a drop in performance with SLI. Undoubtedly a driver problem, we can only hope an official driver will turn the performance picture around. Then again, given some of the other scores, it’d appear we might be looking at some other bottleneck other than graphics-related. For what it’s worth, we finally see ATI’s 512MB RADEON X800 XL shine, in both resolutions taking a first place finish above the competing cards.
| Half-Life 2 with 4xAA and 8xAF | Page:: ( 11 / 15 ) |
Valve Software’s Half-Life 2 with 4xAA and 8xAF
Notes
More of the same here, only this time, the 512MB card does show a slight performance improvement, even if it’s to the tune of one frame in SLI mode. Otherwise, there’s very little to say about how the 256MB and 512MB boards compare. In fact, moving from 1280x1024 to 1600x1200 with the bells and whistles enabled has very little impact on frame rate, suggesting bottlenecks elsewhere. Most notable, perhaps, is the first-place finish garnered by ATI’s X800 XL 512MB, again.
| Pacific Fighters | Page:: ( 12 / 15 ) |
1C:Maddox Games’ Pacific Fighters
Notes
If you saw the preceding benchmark results and were hoping for something a little more exciting here with Pacific Fighters, turn back now (or even better, skip ahead a page instead) because all of the NVIDIA scores are flat. ATI’s numbers drop off from there, but basically reveal that this simulator gains nothing from the future-looking 512MB board designs.
| Pacific Fighters with 4xAA and 8xAF | Page:: ( 13 / 15 ) |
1C:Maddox Games’ Pacific Fighters with 4xAA and 8xAF
Notes
Linear, once again here. It’s worth mentioning that this game looks absolutely gorgeous at super-high resolutions and with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled. And with that said, any of these setups will give you spectacular performance--even the 512MB X800 XL at 80 frames per second. Clearly, this title isn’t the most graphically demanding of the bunch.
| Ballistics Report: BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB | Page:: ( 14 / 15 ) |
Pros:
Performance:There’s no way around it, when you pay $1,000 for a graphics card, you expect the very best in performance, and that’s what this card delivers. Then again, if you’re spending that much on a component, you also probably know its reign at the top will last six months, max. In this case, you’re looking at an even shorter stint on top. If it’s worth the coin to you, then by all means, this card is as utterly bad-ass as you’re going to get.
Support:Expensive hardware tends to get handled much more delicately than the cheap stuff. At least, it does in my lab--subconsciously or not. With that said, it’s good to know that BFG’s 6800 Ultra OC 512MB cards come with a lifetime warranty against defect and 24/7 tech support should you run into trouble or have any questions about configuring the card.
Overclocked:The only thing better than buying the best hardware on the market is finding out it’s actually faster than stock. According to BFG, a GeForce 6800 Ultra should be running at 400 MHz (at least, that’s the speed at which AGP cards run). This behemoth operates at 425 MHz. Incidentally, the ASUS 256MB Ultra tested in this piece also ships at 425 MHz, so BFG isn’t alone here. Nevertheless, we’ll take free performance when it’s given.
Bundle: If, for some reason, you feel that paying nearly $1,000 for a high-end graphics card alone isn’t a sane thing to do, and we won’t necessarily argue with you, BFG adds some value by bundling a clear, 80mm case fan with blue LED lighting, Teflon pads for your mouse, which actually do work well, a full copy of Far Cry (you should already own this--if not, go get it), and a t-shirt that proclaims “Mine goes to 512.” We’re not sure under what circumstances or social situations this shirt would be understood or appreciated, but it’s understandable that one would want to brag after buying such a rare piece of kit.
Availability: This heading began its life in the Cons section because one week ago, the 512MB 6800 Ultra was out of stock at every online store queried. Surprisingly, it’s now readily available at both ZipZoomFly and NewEgg. If you want the hardware, it’s there, ready to be bought.
Cons:
Price: Let’s start out by citing Captain Obvious here. One thousand dollars is a lot of money. If you can afford a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, this thing might be on your radar. If your choices for dinner are Top Ramen or peanut butter and jelly, consider something a little less exorbitant. After all, 512MB of memory simply won’t yield much performance over a 256MB in today’s games.
Fortunately, prices are already falling on BFG’s GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB. Already Newegg offers the card for $884, while ZipZoomFly sells it for $890 with free second-day shipping. This is over $100 less than MSRP.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 15 / 15 ) |
BFG GeForce 6600 GT OC