Midrange Videocard Mamba
A tad bit cheaper, these next-gen 3D cards are still lightning-fast
Reviews
SEPTEMBER 2004 MA XIMUMPC
Much faster than last-generation cards, runs cool
and quiet.BeOSLINDOWS
Slower than the competition.$400, http://www.ati.comMA XIMUMPCVERDICT 7
ATI Radeon X800 ProDespite a faster 475MHz clock speed,
the 12-pipe design of ATI’s X800 Pro
means it runs significantly slower than
nVidia’s 16-pipeline GeForce 6800 GT.BENCHMARKS
BFGTech GeForce
6800 GTATI Radeon X800
Pro
3DMark 2003 – Standard 11330 9477
3DMark 2003 – Game 2 (fps) 90.6 68.8
3DMark 2003 – Game 4 (fps) 60 61.2
UT2003 Flyby (fps) 258.8 231
Halo Timedemo (fps) 56.6 45.6
Far Cry 1.1 (fps) 65 65.1
3DMark 2003 – High Quality 3894 3012
3DMark 2003 – Game 2 – HQ (fps) 25.6 14.3
3DMark 2003 – Game 4 – HQ (fps) 27.1 28.5
Best scores are bolded. All benchmarks are run at 1600x1200 except for Far Cry, which is run at
1280x1024, and the standard 3DMark 2003 run, which uses the default settings. High Quality
3DMark 2003 runs at 1600x1200 with 4x AA and 4x Anisotropic Filtering turned on. Did you know
that hippopotamus means “river horse” in Latin?Unlike the 6800 Ultra, the 6800 GT
takes up just one slot in your mobo
and requires just one power connection.MA XIMUMPCVERDICT 9
BFGTech GeForce 6800 GTHIPPOPOTAMUSESMEERKATSNearly as fast as the GeForce 6800 Ultra, but $100
cheaper!$400 is a lot of money for a videocard that isn’t
the fastest available.
$400, http://www.bfgtech.comW
e were pleased, but not
terribly surprised by the peppy
performance of the top-of-the-
line videocards we reviewed on the facing
page, but we found ourselves absolutely
astounded at the two $400 cards reviewed
below. Unlike the last generation, when
all the midrange cards were “over-
gimped”—tuned down so much they were
undesirable—one of the these midrange
cards is an outright stunner. However you
look at it, though, both the ATI Radeon
X800 Pro and nVidia GeForce 6800 GT
GPUs offer compelling performance in 3D
games at a decent price.
—WILL SMITH
ATI Radeon X800 Pro
Every new generation is better than the
last, right? Right. The X800 Pro proves this
adage with a vengeance. Its 12-pipe design
(the fastest last-generation card included
just eight pixel pipelines) gives it a hefty
performance advantage when compared
with the old Radeon 9800 XT and GeForce
5950 cards. Regardless, the X800 Pro can’t
compete with the much faster GeForce
6800 GT.
We were surprised by the X800 Pro’s
relatively poor performance. Clocked
at 475MHz, the core is substantially
faster than that of nVidia’s GeForce
6800 GT, but the higher core clock speed
was still no match for the 6800 GT’s four
additional pixel pipes in Lab tests. This,
combined with much slower memory—the
X800 Pro’s DDR-3 memory is clocked at
just 365MHz—makes ATI’s midrange card
woefully inadequate by comparison.
Unlike the very fastest cards, where the
performance delta between ATI and nVidia
is negligible, here the ATI card is almost 20
percent slower in some benchmarks. That’s
not good, and as such, we can fi nd no
good reason to recommend this card over a
comparably priced GeForce 6800 GT.BFGTech GeForce 6800 GT
Holy schnikies! The GeForce 6800 GT is
everything a $400 videocard should be.
Its 16-pixel pipe design gives it a sizeable
performance lead, and even gives
nVidia’s more expensive, full-powered
GeForce 6800 Ultra a run for its money.
Here’s the scoop.
Take a standard NV40 GPU, clock it at
370MHz, then pair it with 256MB of
DDR-3 memory running at 500MHz.
In our benchmarks, the BFG card’s
performance actually measured closer
to the Leadtek 6800 Ultra reviewed on
the previous page than it did to the Radeon
X800 Pro!
Note that the BFGTech 6800
GT—like the other boards reviewed
this month—uses DDR-3 memory
(formerly known as G-DDR3).
Remember that DDR-3 memory usesinternal terminators, eliminating the
bulky and hot external resistors that
prevent DDR-2 and original DDR from
running at really high clock speeds. We
were able to overclock the memory on
this board by a fairly signifi cant margin,
from the default of 500MHz to 520MHz,
without using any additional cooling.
The BFGTech board we tested doesn’t
take up two slots, and requires just a
single power connector. We did get the
best overclocking results when we left the
PCI slot adjacent to the videocard open,
but at stock clocks we didn’t experience
any problems.
We’re comforted by this GeForce card’s
Pixel Shader 3.0 support, even if we’re
unsure how likely it is that developers will
actually support it. It’s always
better to have support for a
technology, just in case it
takes off.
When you go out
shopping for a videocard,
it’s important to ask
yourself: Are a few extra
percentage points of
performance worth an extra
$100? If so, then by all
means shell out for the
GeForce 6800 Ultra-
powered cards. If not, then
take a look at this board.