The card we have in for review today is an interesting beast. Not full GT, Nor 6800 Non Ultra, rather 6800 Ultra toned down to somewhere between GT and Non Ultra. You’ll not have seen many reviews of cards with the GTo suffix floating about however they may well be worth a look, certainly from a price perspective it could well be a winner so let’s see how it performs against the more expensive 6800 Ultra…

The Card

Specifications:
- 350MHz Core Engine Clock speed
- 256MB 900MHz high speed DDR3 memory
- Superscalar 12-Pipe GPU Architecture
- CineFX 3.0 Engine
- The Industry's First On-Chip Video Processor
- UltraShadow II Technology
- 64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending
- Intellisample 3.0 Technology
- Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
- nView Multi-Display Technology
- Digital Vibrance Control 3.0
- High-Speed GDDR3 Memory Interface
- 256-Bit Memory Interface with Advanced Memory Control
- 128-Bit Studio-Precision Computation
- Full-Speed 32-Bit Color Precision
- Advanced Adaptive De-Interlacing
- Video Scaling and Filtering
- Dual 400MHz RAMDACs
- 0.13 Micron Process Technology
- PCI-E–SIG certified

As you can see from the specifications above the 6800 GTo features slightly different specs from most other 6800 GT’s. It does however feature the same 256mb of DDR3 as featured in the 6800 GT and Ultra. Where it differs from the two mainly is in the pipeline count. Ultras and GT’s are 16 pixel Pipelines with 6vertex shader units. The GTo is 12 pixel pipelines with 5 vertex units.

The card layout is also a bit of a mix. On one front we have the single slot GT cooler, where as on another we have the Dual PCI bracket featured on the Ultra models. PCB design is completely reference compared to the GT reference design on both the front and back of the card. The more observant amongst you will notice that the card does not feature a Svideo socket. It does however feature Dual DVI and has the connector for SLI support.

GTo cards can be purchased from http://www.overclockers.co.uk for approx £250. for comparisons a non ultra costs £200 approx and GT’s £300 approx from the same store. Essentially if you are running your card at stock you should look at this card as a non ultra with 200mhz more in memory speed and 25mhz in core …and an additional 128mb memory. Which makes it look a very good deal for £50 extra.

Our sample wasn’t a branded retail card so there was no fancy box or bundle to speak of, all that was included was a single DVI converter. Not even a driver disk was included. We did wonder why a company would choose to include a DVI converter which is not required for the card to operate, however would exclude the PCI-Express power cord which is required. Madness! Definitely something to watch out for when purchasing a GTo. (Readers in the UK can pick up a power cable from www.kustompcs.co.uk if needed)

Test System

Nvidia 6800 GTo 256mb
Nvidia engineering sample 6800 Ultra 256mb

AMD Athlon64 4000+
ATI Bullhead – Radeon Xpress Motherboard
2x512mb of OCZ DDR400 2-2-2-5
Samsung 80gb 7200rpm SATA Drive with 8mb Cache
NEC ND2510A DVD recorder
AOC 19” CRT

Windows XP SP2
DirectX 9.0c
Catalyst 8.08 (4.12b)
Forceware 66.93 WHQL

Fraps
Powerstrip
Colin McRae Rally 2005
Half-Life 2
Counter Strike Source
Rome Total War
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
Medal of Honour Pacific Assault
Need for Speed Underground 2
Tiger Woods 2005
Doom3

The test system was built from scratch, a format of the hard drive was performed (NTFS) and then Windows XP was installed (SP2). Next the chipset drivers were installed. The only update applied was .net framework 1.1(latest service pack). Following a reboot the Video Card drivers were installed. Next the benchmarking tools were installed and finally the hard drive was de-fragmented. For all tests the Nvidia were set to default quality/optimisations (unless otherwise stated).

Good Benchmarking Practice:
Where possible each benchmark was performed 3 times and the middle result for each resolution/setting is shown in the tables which follow. All games/applications had their latest patches applied. We also take time to set all in game options to their maximum, this has 2 effects. Firstly you get the most demanding of gaming experiences possible from each engine however more importantly you get the best visual experience possible.

 

Next: Colin McRae 2005

Select 1. Index 2. Colin McRae 2005 3. Medal Of Honor Pacific Assault 4. Need For Speed Underground 2 5. Rome Total War 6. Tiger Woods 2005 7. Prince Of Persia Warrior Within 8. Half Life 2 9. Overclocking and Modding 10. Conclusion