Albatron and ASUS GeForce 6800 Ultra Vendor Review
by Derek Wilson on July 18, 2004 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Test and Overclock
Again, we'll be using the standard graphics testbed for these tests. As this review focuses on the 6800 Ultra GPU in shipping and overclocked states, we'll be including stock Ultra and Ultra Extreme numbers in our tests as well. For perspective's sake, we'll also be including X800 XT and X800 XT Platinum Edition numbers.| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon 64 3400+ |
| RAM: | 2x 512MB OCZ PC3200 (2:2:3:6) |
| Hard Drive(s): | Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB PATA |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | VIA Hyperion 4in1 4.51 |
| Video Card(s): | Albatron Trinity GeForce 6800 Ultra ASUS V9999 Ultra Deluxe NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition ATI Radeon X800 XT |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA 61.45 Beta ATI Catalyst 4.6 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Power Supply: | PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 510 |
| Motherboards: | FIC K8T800 (754 pin) |
We'll be looking at Aquamark and Halo as benchmark titles for performance, and we used coolbits to overclock the cards.
Unfortunately, coolbits isn't always perfect when it comes to setting maximum clock speeds for the GPU. Specifically, with the ASUS card's underpowered cooling solution, coolbits would let us set the core clock up to 470, but when under load, we'd get all kinds of heat related issues. We continually had to back the core clock down after we thought we had found a stable speed due to heat issues. Not only did our overclock end up being lower than the Albatron card, but it was very frustrating to come by.
In order to make sure that we had a stable overclock, we ran loops of FarCry demos for 10 minutes, followed by a run of the Halo demo at 2048x1536. This is also what we did for our temperature test.
Here is the clock speed breakdown for this review:
| Shipping Clock Speeds | Overclocked Speeds | |
| Albatron | 410/1.1 | 460/1.3 |
| ASUS | 425/1.1 | 440/1.15 |
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9 Comments
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ReapeRalex - Wednesday, August 18, 2004 - link
I come here first whenever I'm the market for new toys, good site :)Could you include Doom3 in the benchmarks for these reviews? Apperantly Doom3 can push overclocked cards over the edge that might otherwise appear stable. Lets face it Doom3 and Half Life 2 will the be main game on peoples minds who are looking to upgrade to these new cards (I just hope a Half Life 2 benchmark is available soon so I can make an informed decision on which card to get :) ).
Anyway, great site, always informative and well written :)
mjz5 - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
good review DerekWilson.. and true, we don't need to see 100s of different games benchmarked, this article was created to illustrate the difference between the and only the two makers.pookie69 - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
Nice article. Simple and straight to the point.Just one thing - the noise tests - i think it would be a good idea to perform two sets of tests, one with the cards under load, one when they are both idle. It would be interesting to see exactly how much the noise of some of these cards jumps up by (or not) during gaming.
:)
shuttleboi - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
Can you please provide heat and noise measurements for other cards as well, particularly the ATI x800 cards?Chapbass - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
"Interestingly, the Albatron had its core temperature warning level set at 125 degrees Celsius, while the ASUS was up at 135."Something might be telling me the whole 125 degrees celcius might be a mistake?
but...ya never know...
: )
retrospooty - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
DOOM 3 BABY !!! :DDerekWilson - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
We didn't really need to go heavy on the game tests in order to illustrate how these cards perform in relation to the stock 6800U and 6800UE which have been put through an exhaustive analysis already.But we really want to bring you guys the info you want to see. If these game tests aren't sufficient, we can add a game and/or change the lineup. We don't want to be too heavy on the game tests, but we do want the games we tests to be relevant.
Just let us know what you want, and we'll get it into our upcoming reviews.
Thanks for the feedback!
Pollock - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
And Aquamark isn't technically a game, even if it's based on one...that kind got me, too.Jeff7181 - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
Wow... only 2 game tests?