The following warning information is required to publish by
nVIDIA.
This graphics card requires:
1. A minimum 350W system power supply.
2. An AGP compliant motherboard. Some motherboards
violate the AGP specification and therefore this card may
not physically fit in some systems.
3. An Available hard disk drive power dongle (smaller floppy
disk drive connector is not sufficient).
3DForce 6800Ultra would need 2 hard disk drive power
4.
dongle.
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Introduction
3DForce 6800 series video accelerators are nVIDIA GeForce™ 6800
core technology based 128MB/256MB DDR/DDR3 BGA memory
modules built-in onboard. The 3DForce 6800 series GPUs
supercharges PC game performance.
Featuring groundbreaking technology innovations such as the industry’s
first superscalar 16-pipe architecture and support for the world’s fastest
DDR3 memory, these revolutionary GPUs arm you with everything you
need to tear through your favorite games at unbelievable frame rates.
With 8x floating-point shader power and 2x the vertex processing power
over previous-generation GPUs, the 3DForce 6800 series raise the bar
for 3D graphics performance.
3DForce 6800 series also feature NVIDIA UltraShadow II technology
designed to enhance the performance of shadow-intensive games.
3DForce 6800 series are the industry’s first and only GPUs to feature
unique support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0.
Powered by the proven NVIDIA CineFX 3.0 engine, these advanced
GPUs enable unlimited programmability and infinite program length,
allowing develops to create new class of advanced visuals and effects.
In addition, features such as displacement mapping enable the creation
of unique 3D characters and objects, allowing develops to alter a 3D
models appearance on an individual vertex basis. Through this
technique, developers can create ultra realistic models that fully interact
with the unique lighting of a particular environment. In addition, through
Shader Model 3.0 and the advanced CineFX 3.0 engine, game develops
can create complex lifelike effects like skin, hair and shadows that fool
the eye of even the most discriminating game enthusiast.
3DForce 6800 series are the first to implement 64-bit texture filtering
and blending technology, taking 3D graphics one step closer to film
quality. Fully compatible with the OpenEXR standard used by Industrial
Light & Magic, NVIDIA’s 64-bit texture implementation brings
professional film rendering techniques to today’s games. This new
technology delivers full floating point support throughout the entire
pipeline including floating point filtering, floating point texturing and
floating point blending. Additionally, the new rotated-gird antialiasing
technique removes jagged edges from images by providing more
subsample coverage values in both the vertical and horizontal direction.
Further, 16x anisotropic filtering adds clarity to extreme geometry,
allowing more texture samples to be applied to each pixel of an extreme
polygon. All of these features raise the bar for image quality, clarity and
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detail.
3DForce 6800 series deliver unmatched video features and functionality
through the industry’s first on-chip video processor. This dedicated unit
on the GPU handles the lion’s share of the video processing load,
freeing up the CPU for other tasks. The video processor delivers MPEG
support for encoding and decoding of both analog and digital video
content, as well as high quality video scaling and filtering for impeccable
playback quality at any widow size. An integrated TV encoder allows you
to connect your PC to TV for direct to TV playback and advanced
adaptive de-interlacing technology provides smooth playback on
progressive displays.
Built on the foundation of the industry-renowned NVIDIA Unified Driver
Architecture (UDA), 3DForce 6800 series deliver unmatched
compatibility with the widest range of games and applications for the
ultimate “install and play” experience. Equip yourself with a 3DForce
6800 series GPU so you can play your games the way it’s meant to be
played.
Features and Specifications
3DFORCE 6800 series
CineFX 3.0 Engine
The third-generation of the NVIDIA® CineFX™ engine
unleashes the power of the latest NVIDIA GPUs and streamlines
the creation of complex visual effects. Through the power of the
Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL® 1.5
APIs, programmers can now develop shader programs utilizing
these technologies and techniques:
Infinite length shader programs: With CineFX 3.0
there are no hardware-imposed limitations on shader
programs. The technology and speed advancements of
CineFX 3.0 ensure that longer programs will run
blazingly fast.
Dynamic flow control: Additional looping/branching
options and new subroutine call/return functions give
programmers even more choices for writing efficient
shader programs.
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Displacement mapping: CineFX 3.0 allows vertex
processing with textures, providing a new level of depth
and realism to every component, surface, and character
in a scene. Displacement mapping allows developers to
make subtle changes in a model’s geometry with very
little computational cost.
Vertex frequency stream divider: Effects can be
efficiently applied to multiple characters or objects in a
scene, providing individuality where models are
otherwise identical.
Multiple Render Target (MRT) technology: MRTs
allow for deferred shading, a technique where the
lighting of a scene can be done after rendering all of the
geometry, eliminating multiple passes through the scene.
Photorealistic lighting can be created while avoiding
unnecessary processing time for pixels that do not
contribute to the visible portions of an image.
With the increased horsepower provided by the CineFX 3.0
engine, developers can create more unique game features and
effects than ever before. New effects include subsurface
scattering, providing depth and realistic translucence to skin and
other surfaces; soft shadows for sophisticated lighting effects;
accurately represented environmental and ground shadows; and
global illumination for incredibly photorealistic lighting. All of
these effects can be combined to create intricate, detailed, trueto-life scenes that completely immerse you in the game
environment.
NVIDIA CineFX 3.0 is poised to unleash a new level of
programming creativity. With full DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0
support, the newest 3DForce 6800 series will soon power a new
generation of games with unmatched realism, digital worlds with
mind-blowing complexity, and lifelike characters that move
through cinematic-quality environments.
Intellisample Technology
NVIDIA's Intellisample 3.0, part of the 3DForce 6800 series of
GPUs, includes rotated grid antialiasing to deliver the smoothest
polygon edges to date at unbelievably fast frame rates. The
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3DForce 6800 series GPUs also deliver a new 16x anisotropic
filtering mode for the maximum detail on extreme geometry. In
addition, Intellisample 3.0 utilizes 64-bit texture filtering and
blending, enabling photorealistic lighting and shadow effects.
High dynamic-range images are on the cutting edge of computer
graphics. With 64-bit texture filtering and blending, users can
experience graphics that contain a wider spectrum of bright and
low-level lighting conditions and accuracy.
Intellisample high-resolution compression technology (HCT)—
supported in the latest 3DForce 6800 series—delivers the next
step in performance and visual quality, compressing color,
texture, and z-data. Performance gains can be seen in all
applications, especially at high resolutions with antialiasing. This
new technology allows for up to a 50-percent increase in
compression efficiency in these modes, and delivers
unprecedented visual quality for resolutions up to 1600 × 1280.
UltraShadow II Technology
3DForce 6800 series of GPUs delivers the patent-pending
NVIDIA® UltraShadow™ II technology, which can be applied to
today’s games to build stunning visual effects and to create
distinctive digital environments. With a system powered by a
3DForce 6800 series GPU, anytime a game or application
calculates shadows, UltraShadow II will enhance the overall
performance. With UltraShadow II hardware, the more passes
that are required for the lighting and shadow calculations in a
scene, the more significant the performance improvement, with
the most complex scenes achieving the most noticeable results.
Thus, emerging next-generation games, that employ multiple
light sources with many visible objects in each scene—such as
Doom III from id Software—will see dramatic improvements in
execution speeds. The technology advancements in
UltraShadow II also deliver a 4× performance increase
(compared to the previous generation) for passes involving
shadow volumes.
NVIDIA UltraShadow II gives developers the ability to calculate
shadows much more quickly by eliminating unnecessary areas
from consideration. By defining a bounded portion of a scene
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(called “depth bounds”), and focusing calculations only on the
area most affected by the light source, developers can greatly
accelerate the shadow generation process. With the ability to
fine-tune shadows within critical regions, developers create
incredible visualizations that mimic reality, and still achieve
awesome performance for fast-action games. UltraShadow II
also works perfectly with NVIDIA® Intellisample 3.0 technology
to ensure that shadow edges are properly antialiased.
Superscalar 16-Pipe GPU Architecture
3DForce 6800 series includes a totally new superscalar shader
architecture, which doubles the number of operations that can
be executed per cycle compared to traditional architectures. The
result is a significant performance increase over single-shader
non-scalar designs. In addition, the new architecture provides
full 32-bit floating point precision—while still allowing for 16-bit
mode—so developers can deliver higher quality images in a
broader range of real-time situations. The superscalar design
also provides increased programming flexibility. Increased
performance, flexibility, and 32-bit native mode enable a host of
complex computations and pixel operations, resulting in an
unprecedented level of image sophistication in the latest
bleeding-edge games and other real-time interactive
applications. This technology delivers 8x the shading power of
previous generation products for screaming gaming
performance.
64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending
Based on the OpenEXR technology from Industrial Light &
Magic, NVIDIA’s 64-bit texture implementation sets new
standards for image clarity and quality through floating point
capabilities in shading, filtering, texturing and blending.
Revolutionary innovations like 64-bit texture filtering and
blending allow for higher visual quality and more unique effects
by maintaining floating point precision in all aspects of rendering,
including shading, texturing, filtering, and blending.
The Industry's First On-Chip Video Processor
3DForce FX6800 series GPUs contain a revolutionary
programmable video processor that delivers state-of-the-art,
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high-quality video features. They provide on-chip acceleration for
many functions previously relegated to the CPU or a second
chip. A 3DForce 6800 series GPU essentially serves as two
chips in one: a GPU and a video processor.
Video processing on the GPU deals with two major uses of
video: playback (decoding), and recording analog video and
converting it into a defined digital format (encoding). The most
common format for encoding or decoding is MPEG-2. Other
popular formats, such as Windows Media Video9 (WMV9), are
also supported in the 3DForce 6800 series GPUs.
Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
The Nvidia UDA guarantees forward and backward compatibility
with software drivers. This simplifies upgrading to a new NVIDIA
product because all NVIDIA products work with the same driver
software.
nView Multi-Display Technology
The nView hardware and software technology combination
delivers maximum flexibility for multi-display options and
provides unprecedented end-user control of the desktop
experience.
Digital Vibrance 3.0
This feature allows the user to adjust color controls digitally to
compensate for the lighting conditions of their workspace, in
order to achieve accurate and bright colors in all conditions.
High-Speed GDDR3 Memory Interface
Support for the world’s fastest GDDR3 memory delivers fluid
frame rates for even the most advanced games and applications.
256-Bit Memory Interface with Advanced Memory Control
Delivers more memory bandwidth and efficiency to power the
latest games and applications at blazing speeds.
128-Bit Studio-Precision Computation
128-bit studio-precision computation through the entire pipeline
prevents image defects due to low precision and ensures the
best image quality for even the most demanding applications
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Full-Speed 32-Bit Color Precision
Delivers increased image quality with no performance
compromise.
Full MPEG Support
Delivers a stunning video experience through encoding and
decoding of analog and digital content.
Advanced Adaptive De-Interlacing
Smoothes video and DVD playback on progressive displays
Video Scaling and Filtering
High-quality scaling and filtering technology improves video
playback quality at any window size, including full-screen HDTV
resolutions.
Integrated TV Encoder
Provides best-of-class TV-out functionality for resolutions up to
1024x768.
Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Optimizations and Support
Ensures the best performance and application compatibility for
all DirectX 9 applications.
OpenGL® 1.5 Optimizations and Support
Ensures the best performance and application compatibility for
all OpenGL applications.
AGP 8X
Provides double the bandwidth of AGP 4X—2.1GB/sec. vs.
1.1BG/sec. AGP 8X enables more complex models and detailed
textures, creating richer and more lifelike environments.
Uninterrupted data flow allows for smoother video streaming and
faster, more seamless gameplay.
Dual 400MHz RAMDACs
Blazing-fast RAMDACs support dual QXGA displays with ultrahigh, ergonomic refresh rates–up to 2048x1536@85Hz.
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Dual Single-Link DVI Support
Able to drive the industry’s largest and highest resolution flatpanel displays.
0.13 Micron Process Technology
Delivers high performance through faster clock rates.
Overall Performance
Graphics Core256-bit
Memory Interface256-bit
Memory Bandwidth35.2 GB/sec.
Fill Rate6.4 billion texels/sec.
Vertices per Second600 Million
Memory Data Rate1100 MHz
Pixels per Clock (peak)16
Textures per Pixel (Maximum in a
single rendering pass)
RAMDACs400 MHz
Compatibility
• NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
• Fully compliant with OpenGL 1.5
• Microsoft DirectX 9.0
• WHQL-certified for Windows XP, Windows 2000
Operating Systems
•Windows® 2000 and Windows® XP
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System Requirement
• A minimum 350W system power supply
• Intel Pentium® P4 or compatible system with AGP 8X
Bus Extension Slot
•An available hard disk drive power dongle (full size
power connector; 2 power dongle are needed for
3DForce 6800Ultra)