The NVIDIA 6800 GS Closer Look: EVGA, Leadtek, PNY, and Evertop

The Cards

We've talked about the 6800 GS before, but just to review, the 6800 GS is very similar in design to the 6800 GT, except that it has four fewer pipelines, and a higher core clock (425MHz as opposed to 350MHz). Basically, the 6800 GS offers nearly identical performance to the 6800 GT at a lower cost. With the 6800 GS, NVIDIA plans to phase out the 6800 GT and let the GS take its place as the next NVIDIA card below the 7800 GT.

Leadtek WinFast PX6800 GS Extreme

The first card that we'll be looking at is by Leadtek, and it's called the Leadtek WinFast PX6800 GS Extreme. The "Extreme" in the title refers to the fact that this card comes out of the box with a factory overclock. While the reference 6800 GS comes with a core clock of 425MHz and memory clock of 1.0GHz, Leadtek's Extreme 6800 GS's core and memory clocks are set at 485MHz and 1.1GHz, giving it a small boost in performance over the standard GS.

The Leadtek 6800 GS has a sleek look, with a glossy black cover on the heat sink and the WinFast logo centered in italics. Other than the sticker, the card looks the same as NVIDIA's reference 6800 GS. Also, an important thing to note is that the PX6800 GS Extreme comes bundled with games: Prince of Persia, Warrior Within, and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. These games, as well as the factory overclock, make this card one of the nicer 6800 GSs for sale right now at about $213.

PNY GeForce 6800 GS Overclocked

Our next card is the GeForce 6800 GS Overclocked by PNY Technologies. PNY is a respected graphics card manufacturer and their 6800 GS looks to be of good quality. This GS also features a factory overclock, but it's slightly different with a core clock of 470MHz, and a memory clock of 1.1GHz.

The design of the card itself looks basically the same as the Leadtek and reference 6800 GS, with the exception of the cool blue and black design on the sticker with the cyborg head sticking out just underneath the Verto logo. The box has a similar design, with the increasingly disturbing cyborg head with its insides exposed poking out of a black lake, just underneath the PNY and Verto logos. Note that there are no games included with this card's software bundle.

EverTop GeForce 6800 GS

The next 6800 GS that we have is somewhat unique by a company called EverTop. EverTop is a Korean company and currently these 6800 GSs are only available for sale in Korea and Hong Kong. We've included the card in this review regardless of the fact that it's not available in the US at this time, in part because of the fact that it may become available here in the US sometime in the future (especially if there is interest), and also because AnandTech is a global site, and we're interested in testing parts from any country.

As you can see, the card looks a bit different from the other 6800 GSs that we have for this review. The card looks somewhat stripped down, with a very unique looking fan/heat sink combo. The HSF design is by Zalman who are well known for their quality cooling solutions. If anything else, this card looks like it could be the most easily damaged of the three, as the HSF seems particularly delicate. EverTop seems proud of it though, as the box allows a clear view of the front of the card (weird HSF and all) through a see-through plastic oval on the face of the box. The EverTop 6800 GS is the only one of these four cards that does not come with a factory overclock.

EVGA e-GeForce 6800 GS

The last card that we'll be looking at in this review is by EVGA, a company that we've had lots of good experience with here at AnandTech. They have consistently provided users with quality parts, impressive factory-overclocks, and an excellent warranty policy. Their card is the EVGA e-GeForce 6800 GS.

The EVGA 6800 GS sports the more conventional design of the PNY and Leadtek GSs, again with the exception of the sticker on the HSF. It has a glossy black cover, with some dark and bright green highlights and the NVIDIA GeForce logo on the front, as well as the EVGA logo printed twice around the center of the fan. The EVGA 6800 GS does come factory overclocked (450MHz/1.05GHz), but it doesn't come with any games bundled. Now, let's look at how these four cards overclocked.