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Overclocking

The "detect optimal frequency" setting did not work as well as on the e-GeForce as it did on the BFG card. Some artifacts could be seen after 3DMark looped for a while after the automatic setting of 467/1.18. Subsequent tweaking found a sweet spot at 465/1.22 where the eVga was happily rendering away. A 65 Mhz overclock on the core and a 122 Mhz overclock on the memory are quite good and are approaching the limits of the more exotic solutions from some other vendors. As useful as the detect optimal frequency feature is, note that it is not bulletproof but merely gives a rough guideline as to what a good starting point is for experimentation with the clockrates.

Conclusions

The e-GeForce 6800 Ultra is a premium part with premium performance with a premium price. End users looking for balls out performance will not be disappointed with eVga's e-GeForce 6800 Ultra. This generation of the video card wars should turn out to be very interesting as performance between the X800 XT PE and the 6800 Ultra are very close as we have seen here. As far as feature support goes, the ball is now in the hands of developers. Nvidia is pushing hard for Shader Model 3 acceptance espousing the speed ups possible while ATi is pushing for 3Dc which can dramatically improve visual quality. The spotlight will undoubtably be switching to DOOM3 with the recent announcement that it has gone gold. We did not cover the technology behind the NV40 series specifically but as a small addendum, the rendering architecture of the NV4x series favors DOOM 3 a lot as it can render in 32x0 mode, something that DOOM will take advantage of. Ultrashadow II will also take a big part in reducing geometric complexity. Neither of these features are present on the ATi series of cards and depending on DOOM 3 performance this will likely swing a lot of fence sitters right now who are undecided between the X800 series and the NV4x.

The dual DVI solution is great for users lucky enough to be sporting dual LCDs. eVga also packages in Far Cry, a game that everyone should pick up, especially those witih newer graphics cards. I'm pretty glad that it will not have to be tossed in the pile of Serious Sam and AOL discs collected over the years.

eVga is the only retailer which offers a good trade up program - if you want to upgrade your card within 90 days of your purchase, you get credited with the value of your initial purchase. There are other trade up programs that offer x amount of dollars for your card but none get close to hundreds of dollars. This is potentially a huge deal for those who are looking to upgrade their video cards now but want to hop onto the PCI Express bandwagon a couple months down the road. How sweet is it to be able to take advantage of a 6800 Ultra now but yet have the capacity to migrate it over to a PCI Express board down the road? For users that are close but not quite ready to spring for a new motherboard, it is pretty much a no brainer to go for an eVga solution, unless of course, you have money to burn and would like to pay for the same card twice with a different interface. That said with DOOM on the near horizon this is a good a time as any to start the hardware purchasing spree and the e-Geforce 6800 Ultra is a good a place to start as any.

*Today, July 16th marks eVga's 5th anniversary. Joe Darwin of eVga has informed me of a scavenger hunt with prizes worth over 10,000$ including autographed 6800s and full systems. Be sure to check it out and bring home a prize :) Congratulations to eVga!