Probably the biggest advantage the ASUS has is that it can fit into a small form factor or overly loaded boxes. Of course, finding an SFF with a 500W power supply and no heat issues may be a bit of a challenge. The performance advantage is also nice for everyone, but those planning on overclocking. If all you want is a 6800 Ultra card that performs very well, out of these two, this would be the card. Overclockers, heat, and noise sensitive consumers would prefer the Albatron here.

The decision is made even more difficult by the current pricing of these parts. At the same price, we would recommend the ASUS whole heartedly as it comes with a faster shipping clock, and a single slot heatsink. Unfortunately, $60 isn't enough to convince us to give this card a clear recommendation to anyone but those who absolutely need it. Higher stock performance can be attained with an Ultra Extreme if the single slot design is not required for an application.

Finally some action as actually these two cards do compete against each other. In Far Cry Geforce is better at 10.7 and 12x10 but loses by a small amount at 16x12. Unreal tournament 2004 is definitely Nvidia's game as Nvidia wins with up to 12+ FPS even at 16x12 including all other resolutions. Quake 3 is definitely 6800 Ultra's "pet" as it wins in all resolution even by 20 FPS more then ATI.

3D mark 2001SE is an application where ATI card shines and leaves Nvidia in the dust with almost 1500 marks in overall score and magnificent 58.5 FPS in beautiful nature test. UT 2003 has mixed emotions as ATI wins at higher resolutions and goes up to 15 FPS faster while Nvidia gets better in bot mode by modes 3 FPS.

Nvidia is still faster in Halo while ATI plays faster in Far Cry FSAA 4X and 8X anisotropic filtering. Quake 3 with FSAA 4X and 8X anisotropic filtering still gives Nvidia a huge advantage.

NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 simply rocks. That's a pretty easy conclusion to come to, but for a non-ultra card, the GeForce FX 6800 is a way to get some great framerates for minimal scratch. Plus you get the added bonus of being able to overclock.

Mix this card with some games like Far Cry, UT2004, or Call of Duty, which I didn't get to in this review, and you've got some eye-popping, jaw-dropping hours of fun ahead. I hope you'll excuse me as I'm headed back to the beach to enjoy myself in my nice red shirt

These two new offerings work well to push the top end and drop into the top of the mid-range market. The 6800 Ultra Extreme will probably be out of reach, price and availability wise, for most of us. But, for those hard core gamers out there, both the Platinum Edition and the Ultra Extreme look very good depending on what kind of games are going to be pushed most often through the framebuffer.

The 6800 GT leads the X800 Pro in value more often than not. Of course, the small price difference in the market might not be much now, but honestly the GT and Pro are very comparable parts. The decision is a hard one to make. Our graphs show it, and our recommendation for the moment reflects it: when performance is on par, go with the cheaper hardware. NV40 has the added bonus of Vertex and Pixel Shader 3.0 support (already shown to help make a difference in FarCry performance) and with floating point frame buffers (which could help provide some very cool blending and HDR effects if developers support it). When everything is said and done, the 6800 GT gets our recommendation despite the close performance.

The GeForce 6800, while not the most impressive performer that we've seen, certainly improves on the performance of the 5950 Ultra and 9800 XT with a much lower cost than both. Unless an application that requires 256MBs of video RAM is key in the decision-making process, the 6800 is a better choice right now than the former top-of-the-line cards, even at their reduced prices. This price point should get even more interesting when ATI's $300 offering hits the streets.

Resolved game issues:

• Setting the D3D option to Optimal Quality and configuring the game Freedom Fighters to 1280x1024 no longer results in display corruption being seen on the test resolution window. This issue occurred under Windows XP with an ALL-IN-WONDER 9200 installed
• The water that surrounds Death Island in the game Halo: Combat evolved is now seen as blue in colour. This issues was known to occur under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON 8500 installed
• Image rendering issues in the Truform room found in Serious Sam are no longer noticed when increasing the Truform level to maximum under the Advanced Rendering Option
• Flashing textures in the water are no longer noticed when running Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON X800 XT installed
• Playing the game TOCA Race Driver under Windows XP no longer results in the shadows being missing under the car when the shadow quality is set to high

• Bagle source code unleashed - Virus writers are distributing viral source code with the latest version of the Bagle virus series, Bagle-AD. Much like its 29 predecessors, Bagle-AD is a mass-mailing worm that is packed using UPX file compression. IT comes in the form of a password-protected .ZIP file, with the password included in the message body as plain text or within an image. The ZIP file contains an executable with the extensions EXE, COM or SCR.
• Windows XP SP2 cracked already? - Microsoft has claimed that it's introduced features in SP2 which mean that illegal users of stolen or cracked activation codes won't be able to upgrade the OS, which is due for release in August of this year. However, sources in the community are claiming that there's already a keygen for service pack 2 out in the wild that will bypass the security arrangements.
• Barclays unveils key anti-cyberfraud device - Barclays Bank has issued credit card readers to 5,000 of its Barclaycard customers in a trial of secure online transactions. The six-month pilot to secure online and telephone transactions follows successful internal trials over the last few months to combat the growing problem of card-not-present fraud, which accounts for around 40 per cent of all credit card losses.
• MySQL Authentication Bypass / Buffer Overflow - This advisory details a bug that allows a remote user to entirely bypass the MySQL password authentication mechanism, allowing them to authenticate as a MySQL user without knowing that user's password. Using a similar method, a stack buffer used in the authentication mechanism can be overflowed, though exploitation of the overflow is not straightforward
• Checkpoint Firewall-1 vulnerability announced - A fingerprinting technique, developed by NTA Monitor and dubbed IKE Vendor ID fingerprinting, allows the specific version of Firewall-1 to be identified. NTA reckons that the security issue affects all of the Checkpoint Firewall-1 products that are running IPsec VPN – currently there is no vendor fix, disabling IPsec is the only known workaround so far.
• Academy backs 'pirate-proof' tech for Oscar samplers - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has sanctioned the use of 'pirate-proof' DVDs to allow Oscar voters to preview the movies they're supposed to have seen before choosing their favourite director, actor, gratuitous use of the word f**k in a serious screenplay, etc. If it wins the support of the studios, the move will see DVD content protection specialist and Dolby subsidiary Cinea shipping thousands of discs and players to voters. In addition to a new hardwired encryption system, Cinea's S-View uses a watermarking system that writes a code identifying the host DVD player onto the disc every time it's played and even embeds it into key picture frames. If the disc is copied or the image grabbed using a camcorder pointing to the screen, Cinea can determine whose disc was used as the source for the pirate copies.
• File sharing advocate has movie pirated and file-shared - Famous lefty documentary maker Michael Moore, who has gone on record as supporting the file sharing of his work, has had his latest flick pirated and file shared. A jerky hand cam version of Fahrenheit 9/11 was being distributed in the US last week, according to the anti-Moore Web site www.MooreWatch.Com. According to news.com, MooreWatch co-founder Jim Kenefick, said that Moore has said that he doesn't care if people download his movies or steal his book or sneak into his movies. He is said to have said he doesn't agree with copyright laws and that he makes movies, books and TV shows because he wants things to change.
• Professor gives Cisco manual away for free - Basham, a professor of information technology and IT security at St. Petersburg College in Clearwater, Fla., wrote his own 800-page Cisco networking textbook and last week made it available for download over the Internet free of charge. The book is available as a Word document here.
• Off-topic: Virtual Reality May Distract the Brain from Pain - A trip into virtual reality may literally take a person's mind off the pain of a medical procedure, a new study shows. Scientists found that slipping into a computer-generated world not only lessened how much pain volunteers felt during an uncomfortable procedure, it also dampened activity in the brain's pain centers.
• Off-topic: Titan Reveals its Mysterious Surface - Scientists for the first time have peered through the thick atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, to reveal mysterious features and a possible crater. The latest information from the Cassini spacecraft also shows a large cloud of gas that surrounds both Titan and Saturn, extending far outside the planet's ring system. But scientists so far have seen so sign of the oceans of methane thought to cover the planet-sized moon.
• Off-topic: Spider-Man 2 Has Over 30 Mistakes - Spider-Man 2 may have won over the critics, but the hard-nosed bastards at moviemistakes.com are listing 31 mistakes already.
• Off-topic: Let software catch the game for you - Software that can identify the significant events in live TV sports broadcasts will soon be able to compile programmes of highlights without any help from people. The technology will save broadcasters millions in editing costs - and should eventually lead to new generations of video recorders that will let people customise their own sports highlights packages. But developing software that understands sport is no easy task.
• Off-topic: Evolution could speed net downloads - Internet download speeds could be improved dramatically by mimicking Darwin's evolution to "breed" the best networking strategies, say computer scientists. To tackle the challenge, Pablo Funes of US company Icosystem and Jürgen Branke and Frederik Theil of the University of Karlsruhe in Germany used "genetic algorithms", which mimic Darwinian evolution, to develop strategies for internet servers to use when caching data. Using a simulation they were able to improve download speeds over existing caching schemes.
• Microsoft pays EU in full - Microsoft has paid the US$600 million fine handed down by the European Commission in its antitrust ruling against the company. Representatives of the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant confirmed last Friday that Microsoft deposited the payment in an escrow account while the company's appeal is taking place. While Microsoft had the option of submitting a promissory note in place of such a payout until proceedings are complete, the company dipped into its massive cash reserves, estimated at US$50 billion, to cover the largest antitrust fine ever levied against a company by the European Union.
• BT introducing bandwidth limits - Bandwidth limits are a growing an inevitability with ISPs; NTL introduced them a while ago, and now BT appears to be doing the same thing. Each month, BT customers will get 15/30 gigabytes (512k/1meg respectively) worth of bandwidth. If they go over that, they will be charged for extra bandwidth by the gigabyte (L2/Gig). (thanks Neowin.net)
• 1GB mail at www.walla.com - walla.com just opened a free 1000mb mailbox. Check it out. (thanks Tom Rosen)
• Microsoft develops Windows for parallel computing - Microsoft is developing a version of its Windows Server 2003 operating system that is designed to handle applications running across dozens of single- or dual-processor computers working in parallel. The software, due in the 2H'05, represents a different approach to high-end computing than the company's currently available DataCenter edition of Windows.
• ATI's Richard Huddy talks about Get In The Game - HEXUS' Ryszard recently spoke with ATI's Richard Huddy, primarily about ATI's "Get in the Game" (GITG) initiative.
• Intel resumes deliveries of 915 chipsets - Intel has resumed deliveries of its 915 chipsets, starting early this week, according to sources at local IT makers and channels. Sales of the new-generation Pentium 4 chipsets were suspended in late June after a defect was found in the ICH6 south bridge. Although Intel informed local motherboard makers that it will recall all boards manufactured during the period between June 7 and June 14, it has yet to announce the recall price.
• Mobile processors compared - GamePC has published a performance comparison of mobile processors, including Intel's Pentium M and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, and desktop replacement and mobile flavors of AMD's Athlon 64.
• Corsair Memory Overclocks DDR2 to 667MHz - Corsair's new XMS2 PC2-5300 modules are able to function at speeds of up to 667MHz with CL4 4-4-12 latency settings. The new products are also equipped with heat-spreader with special LEDs to allow users to monitor activity of their RAM. According to the company's statement, XMS2 5300 Pro DDR2 SDRAM memory modules are shipping in quantities now. This makes Corsair Memory the first company to start shipments of 667MHz DDR2 products. Additionally, the memory firm ships DDR2 modules at 400MHz and 533MHz.
• BFGTech GeForce 6800Ultra OC - Right now if you are in the market for a GeForce 6800Ultra based video card you cannot go wrong with the BFG GeForce 6800Ultra OC. It packs all the capabilities and features of the GeForce 6 series into a package that is solid and overclocks well out of the box.
• GeCube RADEON X800 PRO - This video card is a copy of the reference design, but the sticker is nicer and more pleasant than the «native ATI» one with another set of bared teeth. There are no reprimands concerning its operation, the card is quite stable. 2D quality of this specimen is up to the mark: 1600x1200 at 85Hz - no reprimands. Overclocking capacity of this specimen is not bad at all: 530/1140 MHz.
• Plextor PX-712A DVD Burner review - The PX-712A will write to DVD+R media at up to 12X and DVD-R media at up to 8X. Of course, it will also write to DVD+RW (4X), DVD-RW (4X), CD-R (48X), and CD-RW (24X), and read DVD-ROM (16X) and CD-ROM (48X) media. Those are all impressive numbers. Gone are the days of paltry CD read and write speeds for the DVD burner. This drive excels in all categories! It also has something that is not often found on optical drives - an 8 MB buffer.
• Ultra Products X-Connect 500W Power Supply - The X-Connect power supply is as innovative as it is beautiful. Today's performance seekers aren't worried about looks over performance, but it's nice to know that you can get looks, innovation, and performance all with a single PSU. I was a little gun-shy after the voltage problems I had with the pre-production model, but Ultra Products regained my confidence and proved to me that they have designed and built a worthy product.
• Syncmaster 173P 19-inch LCD Display Review - The compact little 17" screen of the Samsung Syncmaster 173P boasts a resolution of 1280x1024 pixels, and an industry standard dot pitch of 0.264mm that makes for a crisper image than current 19" LCDs can muster. While the 173P does retail a bit higher than the average 17" LCD, priced a little over $600USD, it does offer up a contrast ratio of 700:1 and brightness value of 270 cd/m2.
• AudioTrak Optoplay: At a glance - The AudioTrak OPTOPlay rejuvenates the audio experience in a laptop or PC with 24-bit 96 kHz professional quality audio. OPTOPlay is a USB device to enhance a user's listening experience including Dolby Headphone Technology**. It's small and easy to pack away in a laptop bag.
• 17in Widescreen notebook review - TrustedReviews have a review up of the Systemax Hurrican 6000 which is a 17in Widescreen notebook with an Athlon 64 processor and a Mobility Radeon 9700 and 5.1-channel speakers.
• FarCry's New Patch Shows It Does Get Better Than This - As was to be expected, SM 3.0 does not improve rendering quality, even though NVIDIA has repeatedly suggested just that in several of its presentations. Whether the results we saw here in FarCry will translate into a general advantage in SM 3.0 games for NVIDIA remains to be seen, as the performance improvements could be caused by other factors as well. For example, it is entirely possible that the new SM3.0 code path also contains shader code specifically optimized for the NV4x architecture
• Half-Life 2 (beta) Geforce 6800 vs Radeon X800 Benchmarks
• Mac OS X emulator & Stefan Weyergraf RIP - There are currently two flavors: a generic and a JIT (Just In Time) version. The generic version is the slowest, running about 400 times slower than the computer on which PearPC runs  So, if you have a 400Mhz Pentium, the generic PearPC version should top out at a screaming 1Mhz on your system. Fortunately, there is hope. The JIT version of PearPC is a bit more efficient, running at a much faster pace of 40 times slower than the host hardware. This means that our 400Mhz Pentium would drive PearPC at about 10Mhz. In a real world scenario, this would put PearPC at about 77Mhz on a 3GHz Pentium. And although this may be a bit depressing, the fact that we actually have a PowerPC emulation environment running in a completely alien computing architecture is well, quite cool. Unfortunately, on a blog for PearPC, co-author Sebastian Biallas has written of Stefan Weyergraf's death late yesterday evening. A tragic end to a young developer who proved that Mac emulation software wasn't a myth
• [Useful]: Sysinternals Autorun - This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them.
• [Useful]: Sysinternals TCPView - TCPView is a Windows program that will show you detailed listings of all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, including the local and remote addresses and state of TCP connections.
• [Useful]: Sysinternals PSTools - The tools included in the PsTools suite, which are downloadable individually or as a package, are: PsExec - execute processes remotely, PsFile - shows files opened remotely, PsGetSid - display the SID of a computer or a user, PsKill - kill processes by name or process ID, PsInfo - list information about a system, PsList - list detailed information about processes, PsLoggedOn - see who's logged on locally and via resource sharing (full source is included), PsLogList - dump event log records, PsPasswd - changes account, passwords, PsService - view and control services, PsShutdown - shuts down and optionally reboots a computer, PsSuspend - suspends processes, PsUptime - shows you how long a system has been running since its last reboot (PsUptime's functionality has been incorporated into PsInfo).
• [Useful]: Sysinternals Process Explorer - Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.
• phpMyAdmin 2.5.7pl1 (patch level 1) - phpMyAdmin can manage a whole MySQL-server (needs a super-user) but also a single database. To accomplish the latter you'll need a properly set up MySQL-user who can read/write only the desired database.
• Linbox Rescue Server 20040702 - The Linbox Rescue Server (LRS) (download) is a tool to centralize hard disk images, file backups, hardware inventory, Windows PCs software inventory, and remote access on a single server. The LRS can be managed from any PC through a Web-based administration interface. A bootable installation CD or DVD can also be generated from any hard disk image. It supports Ext2/3, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS, NTFS, and FAT filesystems (including Windows' dynamic disks).
• WinMX v3.53 - WinMX (download) is a FREE file-sharing program like no other. It allows you to connect, download, and share files with MILLIONS of other users through the decentralized WinMX Peer Network (thanks Ally Russell)
• VideoLAN 0.7.2  - VideoLAN is an excellent multimedia player with it's own plugins for playing different formats, so it doesn't need any codecs to be installed. It works great for previewing partially downloaded files too.
• Sateira CD&DVD Burner v1.42 -  Saterira CD/DVD burner allows you to create audio and data CD / DVD, CUE / ISO images, multisession and bootable CD/ VD's
• DVD Decrypter 3.2.3.0 - DVD Decrypter is a free tool which enables you decrypt and copy a DVD to your PC's hard disk. From there you can choose to watch them with the likes of PowerDVD and WinDVD or you can re-encode them to MPEG1 (VCD) or DivX..
• DVD Region+CSS Free 5.10 - DVD Region+CSS Free has been updated to version 5.10. This software enables you to watch and copy any region CSS-encrypted DVD movies on any DVD drive. This new version added support for Explorer, which means you can copy DVD to hard disk in explorer window now and support for Nero Burning ROM and Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator, which means you can make bit-to-bit copy now.
• True Launch Bar v.3.0 - True Launch Bar (download) is a utility that seamlessly integrates into Windows shell and gives it additional flexibility by allowing the user to group selected application icons and shortcuts into cascading popup menus of any complexity level.
• WinRAR 3.40 Beta 2 - WinRAR (Win32 ~ Linux ~ changelog) is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.
• NVIDIA ForceWare 61.80 Beta drivers - The files are dated 06/16/2004 and will work with the entire range of Nvidia graphics cards. I haven't had time to test these fully and bare in mind they are not WHQL so please be careful.

Testing with the bundled Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness showed a fairly even match, although the 6800 GT was still slightly ahead. The Sapphire lagged behind considerably on the Halo test, with scores of 62.7fps and 46.9fps at 1,280 x 1,024 and 1,600 x 1,200 respectively, compared with 75.8fps and 59.9fps on the 6800 GT.

But turning to Far Cry, the Sapphire turned in some great numbers, that not only beat the 6800 GT reference board, but are also way ahead of the X800 Pro reference board I previously looked at. Of course, to be fair, the X800 Pro reference board was running on older drivers, and an older revision of Far Cry, which could explain the performance boost. But it definitely appears that the X800 Pro is less bothered by AF than the 6800 GT.

Even with only 12 pixel pipelines the Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro turned in some good numbers in the benchmarks, and if you go to Komplett you’ll get it at a reasonable price too. The impending release of the GeForce 6800 GT may spoil the party for the X800 Pro, but for now it’s the only, reasonably, affordable next generation graphics solution.

Far Cry - BFG 6800 GT OC

Far Cry - Sapphire X800 Pro

The BFG 6800 GT OC is a great card. Yes, it is expensive at $400+, but you get what you pay for. The performance is great, and you can more than likely count on it overclocking even more than its preset overclock values. It will of course run even hotter then, but as long as you keep your case cool, which you should try to do anyway, then I don't see it as a problem. Most users would be more than happy though just keeping it at its default overclocked speeds, and then you get the awesome lifetime warranty to fall back on. Oh, and don't forget 24/7 tech support. These are great extras that make up for the weak bundle.

If you can't quite afford to spend $500+ for the very highest of the high-end cards, then you should definitely put the BFG 6800 GT OC at the top of your consideration list. It's an awesome card with plenty of power.

A Note About Temps
Some of you are probably wondering how hot the 6800 GT OC runs. Well, when my system was idle and doing no 3D rendering, the GPU core maintained a temperature of about 56C while the ambient temperature was 38C. Load temperatures are of course a bit higher. Immediately after running 3DMark03, the core was reading over 73C, and ambient reached 52C. Therefore, you can figure load temps for the core to be mid to upper 70s Celsius and even lower 80s perhaps. That's one hot tamale!

We will begin with Leadtek WinFast A400 Ultra TDH. There are evidently no fundamental changes in the relation of forces between GeForce 6800 Ultra and RADEON X800 XT. The former's performance has increased in some places, and now it's difficult to say which of them is the leader. Surely, actual games are harder for NVIDIA, but we shouldn't forget that the company has the habit not to lay its cards on the table till a certain moment, so it definitely must have some reserves. Second, new technologies shouldn't be forgotten either. Both companies have shown them, so it's only time that can tell which one will win. And we're also waiting for patch 1.2 for FarCry, which is rumoured to demonstrate what shaders 3.0 are. Third, prices are an important factor as well, and this aspect is very uncertain for the moment.

Now for Leadtek WinFast A400 TDH. Evidently, if it costs about USD 300 (the price in US stores is USD 320-360 late in June), it will oust GeForce FX 5950 Ultra for good. Besides, ATI has no new card within USD 300, while RADEON 9800 XT is much more expensive even now. There are some RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB that are sold at about USD 280-290, but the appearance of 6800 in bulk sale will be the death of them too. Thus, the low-end 6800 line looks perfect today, while the high-end one is approximately equal to its rival. Much will depend on the prices and PSU features (considering 6800 Ultra needs about 460-480W)

The new Far Cry patch does indeed seem to be a decent showcase for Shader Model 3.0's potential. The GeForce 6800 cards gain up to about 10% in average frame rates when using the SM3.0 code path. No, the differences aren't going to convert the masses into NVIDIA fanboys overnight, but they do show NVIDIA wasn't kidding about Shader Model 3.0 offering some advantages.

This patch also seems to have cleaned up some problems with the GeForce 6800 code path in the game. Even with Shader Model 2.0, GeForce 6800 performance is way up. Image quality also seems to be quite a bit better than it was on the GeForce 6800 with Far Cry version 1.1. My eye is accustomed to seeing the game run on an Radeon 9800, and the GeForce 6800 cards looked just fine to me with the new patch. I played through a few levels of the game, including some with lots of pixel shader-laden effects on the walls and floors, and I didn't notice any corner cutting or blocky shading or texturing. Of course, some of these changes may be attributable to newer NVIDIA drivers, but the effect is the same.

So what does all of this tell us about the eternal question: "Should I fork over my cash for a GeForce 6800 or a Radeon X800?" I'm not sure, exactly. PC games seem to be approaching the way the console world works, where publishers cut deals to publish exclusive or enhanced games for a given platform. In this case, Ubisoft worked with NVIDIA to make one of the best games of the past six months run smoothly on the GeForce 6800. That's spectacular, especially because the game still runs very well on Radeon cards.

There is no question that if you want the best visual gaming experience from your high end video card you need the fastest CPU you can get your hands on to experience the high level of gameplay these video cards are capable of producing. While it has become evident over the past couple of years that video chipset technology is extremely important in producing a great gaming environment, we can't forget about the CPUs at the heart of our machines. Quite simply put, upgrading to some of today's CPU technology can directly benefit your gaming experience.

Which platform pushes these video cards to their most satisfying levels of Image Quality within our limited gaming suite? Clearly that would be the socket 939 or socket 754 Athlon64 CPUs when pushed into the 2.2GHz territory. Overclock these beasts and their gaming performance cannot be matched. At this point, you might want to go back and read our OCing the Athlon64 3000+ and see a little more about our $350 gaming system that was used in these tests.

So, getting to the matter, today NVIDIA introduced a SLI concept on GeForce 6800. While Voodoo2 SLI utilized a cable connection, NVIDIA utilizes SLI (Scalable Link Interface; or MIO) connector. It enables two cards to share the load using respective algorithms. Like one card handles upper half of the screen and another handles the lower half. No particular performance results were officially announced. But an undisclosed source said that GF 6800 tandem is 77% faster than a GF 6800 with unoptimized drivers. Meanwhile NVIDIA expects 90% performance boost.

The physical differences between the ultra and this version is that this card wont take over the space of the adjacent PCI slot and only requires one power connector. We also found the noise level produced by this card to be lower than the Ultra version which is definitely a good thing. Our reference card overclocked quite well. We managed to get the memory up from 700MHz to 880MHz while the core went up from 325 to 375. This resulted in differences between 4% to 12% which is quite a reasonable performance gain. If we could figure out a hack to increase the pipelines from 12 to 16 then we would definitely have a killer card. Here are a few shots of the card followed by the testbed.

Basically, it boils down to the price and availability of a product. The 6800 is definitely a better performer than the previous generation of graphic cards and although we havent seen a retail version yet, we think that it should be available very soon. Regarding the price, nVidia's suggested price is US$350 however, reading at different websites, it seems that this card might be available for $299. If that is the case, then we think that nVidia might have a winner even though the x800 PRO is a better performer as its currently selling at well above $400.