BFG GeForce 6800 OC 128MB

Introduction

The war between the graphics giants will go on and on for eternity at this point, so the biggest news is always who has the biggest weapon at the time. There always seems to be someone with a bigger gun, but finding out just how much more heat the competitor is packing is becoming more and more of a challenge. Enter NVIDIA's big gun -- the 6800 series of video cards. These feature and performance packed cards are making a very big splash on the gaming scene with the introduction of games such as Doom 3 taxing your graphics with a fury nobody has seen before. What's even better about the 6800 series is its ability to have the same technology at all levels of their products, just having toned down some of the speed on the lower end. Today we are going to look at another Big F#$^@* Gun on the market (no pun intended) with the BFG GeForce 6800OC, the OC meaning overclocked right out of the box. This is the lowest end of the 6800 series cards and features only 128MB of memory on board.

Specs and Features

The biggest difference between the standard 6800 and its big brothers the GT and the Ultra is the slower clock speed and the fewer pipelines. All the same technology is there, just not the extra speed pushers to go along with it. The nice thing about that is the huge price tag doesn't go along with it either, keeping the standard 6800 within reach of the general working man. Shall we take a look at some specs and features......sure why not.

Specs

• GPU NVIDIA® GeForce 6800
• Bus Type AGP
• Memory 128MB DDR
• Core Clock 350MHz (vs. 325MHZ standard)
• Memory Clock 700MHz (effective)
• RAMDAC Dual 400MHz
• API Support Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0, OpenGL for Microsoft® Windows®
• Connectors VGA, DVI, S-Video-Out
• 438 million vertices/sec setup
• 22.4GB/second memory bandwidth

Features

• Custom BFG cooling solution with polished nickel finish and dual blue LED lights
• Superscalar GPU architecture
• NVIDIA® CineFX(TM) 3.0 engine
• On-chip video processor
• NVIDIA® UltraShadow(TM) II technology
• 64-bit texture filtering and blending
• NVIDIA® Intellisample(TM) 3.0 technology
• NVIDIA® ForceWare(TM) Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
• NVIDIA® nView(TM) multi-display technology
• NVIDIA® Digital Vibrance Control(TM) 3.0
• AGP 8X
• Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 support

What's in the box?

• BFG GeForce 6800 OC graphics card
• Quick install manual
• DVI-I to VGA connector
• Y power cable

• Driver CD, which includes
  • NVIDIA® Unified Drivers
  • Full installation manual .pdf
  • NVIDIA® NVDVD 2.0 multimedia software
  • Windowblinds BFG / NVIDIA® skins

Why don't we try to clear up a couple of things really quick before we get too far ahead of ourselves. As I stated before, each of the 6800 cards in the entire 6800 line feature the same technology but have differences in clock speeds, memory, and pipelines on each card.

Just to give you somewhat of an idea on the differences between the standard 6800 and its bigger brothers the GT and Ultra, here is a simple chart that shows memory, pipeline, and clock speeds of the three choices in the lineup.

What you do need to remember about the 6800 OC is that it has already been jumped up to 350Mhz on the core speed straight out of the box. This card is overclocked before you even put it in your PC.

Right out of the box, the BFG 6800 OC is a big boy. There is no doubt the cards are still quite the bricks of the PC world. Hefty and large are key words to describe the overall size and stature of the 6800 OC. The biggest eye-catcher on the card is the cooling unit that makes up a massive portion of the card. The polished surface, dual fans, and copper heatsinks show you there is no monkey business going on around at BFG when it comes to making sure this thing doesn't make your PC a steam room for your other PC parts. The cooling piece is somewhat bulky but attractive and functional at the same time. It gets the job done, and that's what is most important.

The standard connections are all present and accounted for on the 6800 OC. VGA, DVI, and S-Video are all reporting and ready for duty. I use a 20" Dell LCD, so DVI is a must-have for me now. I wouldn't have had a second thought about it prior to owning an LCD, but now there is no going back to the standard VGA for me. If you have an LCD and haven't made the switch give it a try, go DVI.

Inside the box was the card, driver CDs, demos of Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, Silent Storm, and Painkiller, and even a full copy of Far Cry. Not a bad bundle compared to many of today's cards. There is also a DVI to VGA adapter and a Y molex connection if you need them.