Technical data

Versions:
GeForce PCX 5300 - 128MB - 64-bit -
250/332 MHz
GeForce PCX 5700 - 128MB - 128-bit -
425/500 MHz
GeForce PCX 5900 - 128MB - 256-bit -
350/550 MHz
GeForce 6200
Meant to be an affordable entry-level card, the
GeForce 6200 rounds out the NV4x line at the
bottom. At the very recent introduction of this PCI
Express line of cards, NVIDIA used modified
GeForce 6600 processors with some features dis-
abled. It stands to reason that NVIDIA will use a
different, newly designed chip to save on costs once
the parts begin to ship to retail. Currently, an AGP
version is not planned.
GeForce 6600
The GeForce 6600 (aka NV43) is the first main-
stream line of cards built on the NV4x architecture.
To reduce the production cost of the chip.
NVIDIA reduced the number of pixel pipelines to
eight, pared down the vertex shader units from 6 to
3, and slimmed down the memory interface to 128
bits.Two models have been announced so far: the
GeForce 6600 GT and the 6600. NV43 is also
NVIDIA’s first native PCI Express part. According
to NVIDIA, an AGP version of the 6600 using the
HSI Bridge chip is already being prepared.
Versions:
GeForce 6600 - 8PP - 128/256MB - 128-bit -
300/550 MHz
GeForce 6600 GT - 8PP - 128/256MB - 128-
bit - 500/1000 MHz
Articles:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graph-
ic/20040812/index.html
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graph-
ic/20040907/index.html
GeForce 6800
The GeFo r ce 6800 is the first product family of
N V I D I A ’s NV4x line of chips.The fact that NVIDIA
has dropped the “ F X ” f r om the name emphasizes how
much the company is trying to distance itself fro m
p r evious generations with this chip.The entire arc h i -
t e c t u r e has been thoroughly ove r h a u l e d , and the
weaknesses of the NV3x addre s s e d . As a re s u l t , t h e
NV4x cards no longer suffer a performance penalty
when running DirectX 9 shaders at full floating-point
p r e c i s i o n . A l s o, with support for DirectX 9.0c and
Shader Model 3.0, NVIDIA is one step ahead of the
c o m p e t i t i o n . C o m p a r ed to the previous flagship mod-
els of the FX 59xx line, this card offers more than
twice the perform a n c e . U n f o r t u n a t e l y, the bl a z i n g l y
fast Ultra ve r sions have ve ry strict power supply
re q u i rements (more on this short l y ) .
The cards of the GeFo r ce 6800 line are ava i l a b le in
t h r ee ve r s i o n s . The Ultra ve r sion features 16 pixe l
p i p e l i n e s , runs at clock speeds of 400/1100MHz
( c o r e / m e m o r y) and re q u i r es two auxiliary powe r
c o n n e c t o rs . The GT ve r sion differs from the Ultra
only in that it runs at a slower speed: 3 5 0 / 1 0 0 0 M H z ,
and makes do with only one extra power connector.
F i n a l l y, t h e r e is also the "vanilla" GeFo r ce 6800
(without any suffix) which features only 12 pixe l
pipelines and 128MB of memory.
The GeFo rce 6800 GT and Ultra models are ava i l-
a b le in both AGP and PCI Express flavo rs , while the
vanilla 6800 currently ships solely as an AGP part .
Versions:
GeForce 6800 - 12PP - 128/256MB - 256-bit -
325/700 MHz
GeForce 6800 GT - 16PP - 256MB - 256-bit -
350/1000 MHz*
GeForce 6800 Ultra - 16PP - 256MB - 256-bit
- 400/1100 MHz*
*The PCI Express models support NVIDIA’s SLI
technology.
Articles:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graph-
ic/20040414/index.html
Beyond NVIDIA and ATI - Alternatives
There are very few real alternatives to cards based
on chips from ATI or NVIDIA.While boards using
XGI or S3 chips are available, these don’t have any
real presence in the market. Only SiS has been
comparatively successful in the market, thanks to
the low-cost Xabre 400 and 600 cards.These cards
have been plagued by driver problems and low tex-
ture quality, though, which should be considered
before a purchase.
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