The GeForce 6800 Ultra, nVidia’s top-end GPU, is notorious for being hard to find, but XFX has finally released a production version. And that means gamers with money to spend now have two choices (see Asus’ take on ATi’s X850 XT PE, below right) at the top end of the gaming spectrum.
The numbers certainly speak for themselves: an average Unreal Tournament 2004 frame rate of 67fps at 1,600 x 1,200 with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering is excellent, as is 62fps in Halo at the same settings (note that this is on our normal test rig, based on a 3.46GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition). For the moment, no game will stress this card, even at the highest resolution and detail settings. This is borne out by the results of our Doom 3 benchmark. With the Ultra detail setting at 1,600 x 1,200 resolution, coupled with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering turned on, it produced 33fps – practically the same as the Asus Extreme AX850XT Platinum Edition.
In performance terms, it’s an even match. But when it comes to price, the XFX has the edge.
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