3Digest, July 2005:
NVIDIA GeForce 6800LE 128MB DDR (325/700 MHz)
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This GPU is presented by Palit GeForce 6800 card.
Features:
- NVIDIA GeForce 6800 (reduced to 8 of 12 pixel and 4 of 5 vertex pipelines with RivaTuner), 325 MHz clock;
- 128MB DDR SGRAM in Hynix BGA chips; 350 (700) MHz max. clock rate.
- 256-bit bus;
- Peak fill rate in the multitexturing mode without optimizations is 2600 megapixels/sec and 2600 megatexels/sec.
By the end of the month the product costs $180-210, supports DirectX 9.0c.
This is a new-generation product for the below $300 segment (prices are even below $200 at the moment). Supports all innovations, including shaders 3.0. 2.8ns fetch indicates the actual 350 (700) MHz clock. AGP x4/x8.
As you see, these cards are made of defective NV40 that have only 8 pixel and 4 vertex pipelines operable. Initially these were meant only for system builders, not for retail. However leakages resulted in tricked customers (6800LE looks like 6800) made NVIDIA approve these cards for separate retail. But you must remember that there are still 6800 cards with 8 pipelines instead of 12.
So, be careful. The new version of RivaTuner (available at www.guru3d.com) not only shows you the exact number of pipelines, but can manage them if not blocked in hardware.
RivaTuner utility will allow you to enable all 16 pixel and 6 vertex pipelines of NV40 bypassing the hardware lock. But this will be like a lottery, as only your experience will tell if they are operable or not.
You can read more on GeForce 6 Series in our reviews: Theoretical and analytical graphics card reviews containing functional analysis of NVIDIA GPUs
On July 10, 2005 the latest drivers from NVIDIA were 71.72 (WHQL) for Windows XP.
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