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), 300 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 2400 megapixels/sec and 2400 megatexels/sec.

By the end of the month the product costs $330-370, supports DirectX 9.0c.

This below $300 product (now already below $200) supports all modern technologies, including Shaders 3.0. AGP x8/x4 interface. 2.8ns fetch indicates the actual 350 (700) MHz clock rate. 256-bit bus.

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 November 15, 2005 the latest drivers from NVIDIA were 81.95 for Windows XP.