Albatron and ASUS GeForce 6800 Ultra Vendor Review
by Derek Wilson on July 18, 2004 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Well, it's really up to the reader at this point to decide what's more important. The Albatron card does a little better than reference at its slightly massaged clock speed, and we saw some very nice overclocks out of this Ultra part. Overall, we have to say that with stock HSF and a competitive price, the Albatron is the best vendor 6800 Ultra that we've taken a look at, with its 10MHz default overclock and rock solid overclocking. Of course, we have new cards coming in every day; rest assured, we'll get them tested and drop them in a comparison as soon as we can.The ASUS card is a single slot part with a louder fan that gets a bit hotter than the Albatron with its stock HSF. Of course, this card has a higher default clock speed than the Albatron, but not really much more overclocking room.
So, is it out-of-the-box performance that we want? Is pushing the card as hard as possible the goal? Are noise and heat considerations important? Only after answering these kinds of questions can a logical decision be made between these two cards.
Probably the biggest advantage the ASUS has is that it can fit into a small form factor or overly loaded boxes. Of course, finding an SFF with a 500W power supply and no heat issues may be a bit of a challenge. The performance advantage is also nice for everyone, but those planning on overclocking. If all you want is a 6800 Ultra card that performs very well, out of these two, this would be the card. Overclockers, heat, and noise sensitive consumers would prefer the Albatron here.
The decision is made even more difficult by the current pricing of these parts. At the same price, we would recommend the ASUS whole heartedly as it comes with a faster shipping clock, and a single slot heatsink. Unfortunately, $60 isn't enough to convince us to give this card a clear recommendation to anyone but those who absolutely need it. Higher stock performance can be attained with an Ultra Extreme if the single slot design is not required for an application.
Down the road, we'll have plenty of other vendors in the running, all of which have something special to bring to the table. We will be giving out some Editor's choice awards when we have gone through more vendor cards, and we are definitely open to adapting our vendor reviews from reader feedback. Stay tuned to find out what's next.
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ReapeRalex - Wednesday, August 18, 2004 - link
I come here first whenever I'm the market for new toys, good site :)Could you include Doom3 in the benchmarks for these reviews? Apperantly Doom3 can push overclocked cards over the edge that might otherwise appear stable. Lets face it Doom3 and Half Life 2 will the be main game on peoples minds who are looking to upgrade to these new cards (I just hope a Half Life 2 benchmark is available soon so I can make an informed decision on which card to get :) ).
Anyway, great site, always informative and well written :)
mjz5 - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
good review DerekWilson.. and true, we don't need to see 100s of different games benchmarked, this article was created to illustrate the difference between the and only the two makers.pookie69 - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
Nice article. Simple and straight to the point.Just one thing - the noise tests - i think it would be a good idea to perform two sets of tests, one with the cards under load, one when they are both idle. It would be interesting to see exactly how much the noise of some of these cards jumps up by (or not) during gaming.
:)
shuttleboi - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
Can you please provide heat and noise measurements for other cards as well, particularly the ATI x800 cards?Chapbass - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
"Interestingly, the Albatron had its core temperature warning level set at 125 degrees Celsius, while the ASUS was up at 135."Something might be telling me the whole 125 degrees celcius might be a mistake?
but...ya never know...
: )
retrospooty - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
DOOM 3 BABY !!! :DDerekWilson - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
We didn't really need to go heavy on the game tests in order to illustrate how these cards perform in relation to the stock 6800U and 6800UE which have been put through an exhaustive analysis already.But we really want to bring you guys the info you want to see. If these game tests aren't sufficient, we can add a game and/or change the lineup. We don't want to be too heavy on the game tests, but we do want the games we tests to be relevant.
Just let us know what you want, and we'll get it into our upcoming reviews.
Thanks for the feedback!
Pollock - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
And Aquamark isn't technically a game, even if it's based on one...that kind got me, too.Jeff7181 - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
Wow... only 2 game tests?