NVIDIA NV40

NV40

6800 GT

6800 Ultra

SIC66SIC66

Die Shot

Block Diagram

Vertex Diagram

Pixel Diagram

NVIDIA's NV40 GPU uses the Curie architecture and is made using a 130 nm production process at TSMC. With a die size of 287 mm² and a transistor count of 222 million it is a medium-sized chip. NV40 supports DirectX 9.0c (Feature Level 9_3). For GPU compute applications, OpenCL version N/A can be used. It features 16 pixel shaders and 6 vertex shaders, 16 texture mapping units and 16 ROPs. Due to the lack of unified shaders you will not be able to run recent games at all (which require unified shader/DX10+ support).

Further reading: GeForce 6 Architecture Whitepaper

Graphics Processor

Released: Apr 1st, 2004

GPU Name: NV40

Architecture: Curie

Foundry: TSMC

Process Size: 130 nm

Transistors: 222 million

Density: 773.5K / mm²

Die Size: 287 mm²

Graphics Features

DirectX: 9.0c (9_3)

OpenGL: 2.0.3 (full)
2.1 (partial)

OpenCL: N/A

Vulkan: N/A

Shader Model: 3.0

WDDM: 1.0

PureVideo HD: VP1

VDPAU: No Support

Render Config

Pixel Shaders: 16

Vertex Shaders: 6

TMUs: 16

ROPs: 16

Max. TDP: 142 W

All Curie GPUs

NVIDIA GPU Architecture History

2025 Blackwell 2.0
2024 Blackwell
2023 Hopper
2022-2024 Ada Lovelace
2020-2024 Ampere
2018-2022 Turing
2017-2020 Volta
2016-2021 Pascal
2014-2019 Maxwell 2.0
2014-2017 Maxwell
2013-2015 Kepler 2.0
2012-2018 Kepler
2010-2016 Fermi 2.0
2010-2013 VLIW Vec4
2010-2016 Fermi
2007-2013 Tesla 2.0
2006-2010 Tesla
2003-2013 Curie
2003-2005 Rankine
2001-2003 Kelvin
1999-2005 Celsius
1998-2000 Fahrenheit

Graphics cards using the NVIDIA NV40 GPU

Name	Chip	Memory	Shaders	TMUs	ROPs	GPU Clock	Memory Clock
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra	6800 Ultra	256 MB	16 / 6	16	16	425 MHz	550 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT	6800 GT	128 MB	16 / 6	16	16	350 MHz	250 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 LE		128 MB	8 / 4	8	8	300 MHz	350 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce 6800		128 MB	12 / 5	12	12	325 MHz	350 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS		256 MB	12 / 5	12	12	350 MHz	500 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XT		256 MB	8 / 4	8	8	300 MHz	350 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL	6800 Ultra	256 MB	16 / 6	16	16	400 MHz	550 MHz
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4000	NV40 GL	256 MB	16 / 6	16	16	375 MHz	500 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XE		256 MB	8 / 3	8	8	275 MHz	266 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT DDL	6800 GT	256 MB	16 / 6	16	16	350 MHz	500 MHz

NV40 GPU Notes

PureVideo HD: VP1
VDPAU: No Support

Latest Drivers:
Windows 2000:
ForceWare Release 93.71 / 93.81 Beta
Quadro Release 261.19

Windows XP / Server 2003 x64:
GeForce Release 307.83
Quadro Release R310 U7 (312.69)

Windows Vista / 7 / 8:
GeForce Release 309.08
Quadro Release R310 U7 (312.69)

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