"Wonder of engineering" - ASUS EN6800GT Dual
ASUS EN6800GT Dual Board Layout
Of course, the board specimen that we received for tests came in the OEM bundle. To be precise, the package having no special identification contained the board itself, a brief setup guide (we'll talk about these in more detail in what follows), as well as two DVI-D-Sub 15-pin adapters, two adapters for additional power supply, and a S-Video/RCA cable.
As we have already stated, the overall dimensions of the card are simply huge. Therefore, issues may come up in the attempt to fit the device into the housing albeit spacious enough. We did not come across this issue because we use an open test-bench, but we must warn you in advance.
The PCB design is made in a way to make it possible to fit two separate 6800GT cards on a single board - two GPU and eight video memory chips. Because of the complexity of wiring of this kind, one block was somehow shifted upwards, which is one of the causes that the board offers a nonstandard size.
Note another most important point - to date, EN6800GT Dual is able running on ASUS' motherboard built on the nForce4 SLI chipset (ASUS A8N-SLI model). Perhaps in future the board will run trouble-free on motherboards by other manufacturers and built on this chipset, but so far we haven't yet got any precise information regarding that. So we go on examining the card.
The cooling system is a solid structure made of two big aluminum radiators with a fan over the center.
Each radiator is aimed at cooling its "own" GPU and video memory chips, with the fan being a link to the plastic blades.
Of interesting points is the backlight near the fan, with the gleaming ASUS logo adding a special effect during the card operation. This effect is made due to additional LEDs positioned on a separate small board on the left-hand radiator.
As regards the fastening of the whole structure - made at very good quality - there are four screws around each GPU plus additional "safety" screws positioned over all the edges of the cooling system. On the reverse side of the board, there are two separate aluminum fastening plates - for the screws around the GPU. The power line conditioners are cooled with a separate aluminum radiator. The cooling system is dual-slotted, with "silvery paint" used as the thermo interface for the two GPU and thermo paste for all the video memory chips.
Let's look at the GPU 6800GT (NV45). Both the graphic processors run at 350 MHz which is standard for GeForce 6800GT. Every chip offers 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex units. The HSI bridge through which support for the PCI-E on NV45 is offered is made within GPU's common housing.
The card is equipped with two kits of video memory 256 Mb each, with a 256-bit data transmission bus assembled of eight Samsung memory chips of 1.6 ns access time. This is equivalent to 625 MHz (1250 MHz DDR) of operating frequency. Originally, the memory runs at 1200 MHz DDR as it should be as per the 6800GT specifications. Note that the board uses memory faster than that normally installed on GeForce 6800GT (of 2 ns access time). That is, the board is sort of a synthesis between 6800GT and 6800Ultra. The above fact allows assuming a very good overclocking capability (at least, for the video memory), which we'll try in practice.
Since the power consumption of such "hybrid" falls outside the limits for 6800GT, the board has two connectors for additional power supply.
It is also equipped with two digital outputs and a S-Video output.
Now on to the benchmarking.
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CPU & Memory:
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