Installation:
Installing the card was no sweat. After securing the 6800 GS and plugging in its 6 pin power connector, I proceeded to boot up the PC. All I had to do to get the card running was download the latest drivers from the NVIDIA website. As far as your PSU is concerned, NVIDIA claims that this card has a maximum power draw of 70W, so a 350W PSU is recommended for a single card setup, 420W for SLI. We used an Enermax EG-701 (600W) and everything ran without problems.
The card is quiet even when the fan spins at 100%, nothing like the 6800 Ultra at full blast.
Overclocking
Overclocking the card was a pleasure. The GPU ran without problems at 480 MHz (55 MHz increase) and the memory topped out at 1280 MHz (280 MHz increase). Temperatures rose to around 65 C on the GPU when under full load. Powerstrip was used to obtain these clocks, ATITool was used to scan for artifacts.
Test System
Test System |
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CPU: | AMD Athlon 64 3500+ |
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Motherboard: | DFI Lanparty nF4 SLI-DR |
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Memory: | 2x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL CL 2 3-2-5 |
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Video Card: | NVIDIA 6800 GS, 6800 Ultra |
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Harddisk | 2x WD Raptor RAID 0 |
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Power Supply: | Enermax EG-701 |
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Software: | Windows XP SP2, Forceware 81.94 |
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