Chaintech AA6800 Turbo Edition (GeForce 6800)
Tests with Games
Nothing of a surprise has been found out in this test. As you remember from our previous comparative tests and as you can judge now, the X800PRO has surpassed even 6800GT, let alone AA6800.
If we forget about the rival's presence for a moment, we see that that NVIDIA cards go keeping almost the same distance from one another.
It's good when the card in question appears to be a really good product. This is confirmed by X2, a benchmark that gives quite enough load to the video card. While in the regular mode the AA6600 and X800PRO go abreast, the AA and shadows enabled widen the gap between them in favor of the overclocked version 6800. And only at 1600x1200 they arrive at some sort of a "common denominator".
Looking at the results for UT2K3, it appears to be more interesting to include into the graph the results for GeForce6800 non Ultra with 256Mb of memory. That's what we'll do soon. But for now we see an awful lag of both 6800 in high resolutions (remember that both cards offer 128 MB of video memory).
No test nowadays is run without Far Cry. At that, we see the same picture like in UT2K3, namely, the lag of both 6800 in high resolutions. Regarding the 6800GT and Õ800PRO, no variant reading should be there. All is clearly seen on the graphs.
Personally, we are more interested in commenting merely the last graph, because without AA and AF and even Low-settings we can observe a very amusing parity among all the cards, with some sort of "branching" at 1600x1200 - the game is weak for modern video cards :).
With the aggressive quality settings enabled, a real difference at performance is getting increasingly vivid. The conclusion is similar to those when testing in UT2K3 and Far Cry.
And for dessert - a smashing hit of the season. DOOM3!
Final Words
For the time being, the product by Chaintech appears to be a catch, which anyway has its own pros and cons, like any solutions in question.
You can list the pros for quite a long time. The first and the most important is the superb performance, because in many tests the AA6800PRO left X800PRO behind, and at most others it approached to it at the maximum possible number of FPS. With the recommended price 305$, the solution that is almost on par with X800PRO appears to be more attractive. By the way, it is attractive not only at performance and price but is also nice to look, so the buyers who find the aesthetic factor of importance will be quite pleased by AA6800.
Now let's talk about the cons. There is one shortcoming (which in fact can't be regarded a flaw) which I dare to state. During the tests of the video card, we also tried overclocking it. The results proved not so impressive. That is, 395 MHz/800 MHz without any modification to the cooling. Note that I am talking about the absolutely stable frequencies now. While the chip has nothing to complain, and 395 MHz is a very good result for it, but we expected much more from the 2.2 ns memory. We do hope we got a somehow faulty specimen, because in all the other respects AA6800 proves almost ideal.
On the whole, we are pleased to state that a high-quality, successful and powerful product has emerged on the market, and to congratulate Chaintech on another superb solution based on NVIDIA chips. It's nice that manufacturers don't forget about the AGP market and rejoice the consumers who are not planning to migrate to the PCI-Express in the near future, as well as interesting and attractive options for upgrading their systems.
Considering today's popularity of 6800 non Ultra, this is very good. And we, considering the above factors, we'll soon present one more interesting card based on the 6800 non Ultra to your judgment.
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