eVGA e-GeForce 6800 Ultra Review - PAGE 1

Introduction

While the internet is a great for discussion, it is also a breeding ground for negativity. A lot of companies shy away from discussion boards because of this and it takes a company a lot of moxie or impeccable customer service to do this. eVga probably has both these traits. Founded in 1999 as a Nvidia solution only provider, the eVga brand name has been one that is spoken of highly. The focus of eVga has always been customer service and satisfaction and a cruise through their forum is evidence of this having a great little community with nary a negative experience.

Today we take a look at eVga's flagship product, the e-GeForce 6800 Ultra. The other two cards in the eVga 6800 lineup are the e-GeForce 6800 GT and the e-GeForce 6800. The Ultras from all companies seem to be trickling out at the moment.

Specifications

eVga and most other vendors will have their 6800 Ultra pegged at 400 Mhz for the core and 1100 Mhz for the memory. Other vendors including BFG will release overclocked versions of the card. A 6800 has roughly a 10% increase in memory bandwidth compared to the GT series and roughly 15% more on the core. We note that the processing power of the GPU core has increased substantially over the 5950 series but the raw memory bandwidth has not. Memory technology just is not scaling up as quickly.

Something that is unique to the 6800 Ultras are the dual DVI outs instead of the more traditional DVI / D-Sub combination. LCD users can rejoice but CRT users have nothing to fear as eVga has included two DVI->D-Sub converters for those with a single or dual CRT setup.