venom1969
This review was a little lame imo.
Geforce 6800 Ultra cards are stock clocked at 400 and not 450. Geforce 6800 Ultra Extreme Edition is 450, which should not be allowed imo. Cos finding one is even less likely than x800 xts, and if you do find one it'll cost you an extra £100. So were the clocks of the ultra card you were using?
I'll quote from the review, first page. “Currently, NVIDIA state that a 6800 Ultra is a full four quad NV40 (AGP part) running between 400 and 425MHz, with 256MB of GDDR3 memory running between 1100 and 1200MHz on a 256-bit memory bus, with a pair of DVI ports. Any 6-series board that meets those specs is a 6800 Ultra.”
So an Ultra is anywhere between 400 and 425 and there's no set clock in that range, it's up to the AIB. The Ultra used in the review was clocked at 400/1100.
venom1969
You also forgot to include Far Cry benchmarks which would show x800 still dominates. Other factors influencing people's buying decisions include, heat and power consumption. And the fact that Geforce 6800 Ultra owners need 2 molexes to power the card, and an extra pci slot for decent cooling (forget asus' substandard cooling).
I didn't forget. We don't use Far Cry in reviews of reference boards. Your retail board considerations are quite valid. I covered the heat and power requirements of the Ultra in the Ultra review. This review was for the GT and the plain 6800 and I cover their coolers and power requirements. The review title and the article content give that away somewhat. Retail board reviews cover the specifics of that AIB's chosen cooler, so that's where you need to look for that information.
venom1969
Why was 1600x1200 only done in 4aa and 8af? Some people would think that 1600x1200 doesn't even need 4aa. Plus you're forgetting temporal aa which ati has, which would give further improvements.
Look at the Ultra review for some 1600x1200 with 8AA and 16AF numbers, if you want to see it struggle ;) 1600x1200 certainly does need geometry anti-aliasing in some games titles. I cover temporal AA in the X800 article. Again, it's a review of GeForce 6-series boards, not ATI hardware. They got their own article.
venom1969
And the omission of 1280x1024 is noticeable too. A lot of people have 17“ and 19” gaming monitors which support this as it's native resolution.
Again, read the Ultra's own review. I use 1280x1024 there. You can find that
here.
venom1969
x800 series also wipes the floor with the 6800 series in the RTHDRIBL v1.2 test. Which is a true indication of directx9. Hopefully HL2 will prove ati owners that their purchased the superior card.
I take it you're a fan of ATI hardware? :p RTHDRIBL isn't a true indication of DX9 since it ostensibly uses hand written shaders, something that's not too common. It's a nice test that shows off what can happen when shaders cause resource management issues on certain hardware.
venom1969
Vis a vis the doom3 opengl argument (pre emptive strike :)) ati is developing it's opengl driver to fully utilise the power of it's x800 core.
And I sincerely hope they create a brilliant OpenGL driver, since consumers of their hardware should have the OpenGL performance the hardware is capable of.
edit:
venom1969
Oh I also forgot it's quite a bit louder than the x800 and it definitely won't fit in a shuttle without some modding.
That depends on the AIB's cooler and again, it's a reference board review, not retail. Depends on the Shuttle too. Their P-series chassis's take a 6800 Ultra without a problem.
I get the impression that you took the intended focus of the article the wrong way. It's a review of the 6800 GT and the plain 6800, nothing more. The 6800 Ultra and ATI's X800 cards go their own articles where they were focussed on, you can find them using the site navigation system. Things you seemed to think were missing from the review are present elsewhere.
We can't cram everything into one big article, but we do cover it all elsewhere (hopefully).
You obviously like ATI's gear, and rightly so, their hardware is awesome. But at the same time we can't be that kind of biased when writing, we need to stay impartial.
Anyway, welcome to the forums, stick around, we could use more thoughtful posters like you!
Rys
