Although the specifications of the 6600 GT and 6800 we ran here were a little different from the reference specifications they weren't that great that they would make too significant an impact on the results had we had boards that ran at the reference specifications. Overall the performance of the standard 6800 was disappointing as a single board, with performances that were behind the 6600 GT despite its similar fill-rate; we would have also expected to see greater gains under FSAA conditions on this board thanks to its 256-bit bus, but they didn't manifest themselves. The performance of the 6800 carries on in its SLI configuration with its performance rarely getting close to a single 6800 GT and not always posting particularly great gains over a single 6600 GT. The 6600 GT did make a more convincing case in SLI mode in a few titles with the SLI performance, when it's performing optimally, managing to be a little higher than a single 6800 GT or even Ultra, though with only 128MB of RAM this board does suffer more with FSAA rendering.

The 6800 GT and Ultra is where things become a little more serious as the SLI configurations are going to offer good propositions to the enthusiasts out there. These boards already have significant rendering power so the gaming performance is not going to be seriously impaired under the conditions where SLI isn't working optimally, but when it does the performances allow for higher resolutions at higher quality levels. For some of the enthusiasts that are looking to go straight to a high end SLI setup then the a 6800 Ultra SLI system may appear to be the immediate choice based on its performance alone; however, the 6800 GT SLI configuration can make a convincing case as well - it will be less noisy, you may be better able to use one of the slots in between the two boards should you need to at some point and the performance differences between it and the Ultra are not that huge.