Conclusion

Although not without drawbacks, the MSI NX6800-TD128E graphics card was always faster than the GeForce 6600 GT and was especially good at overclocking. The accessories to this product are not gorgeous but sufficient, and this is another indication that the NX6800-TD128E is a quality and at the same time inexpensive product that will suit well for building an inexpensive PCI Express platform.

You should be aware, however, that the MSI card clocks its memory at a 100MHz smaller frequency against the reference design (600MHz against 700MHz) and also has some problems with the image quality in 2D applications.

A SLI pair of MSI NX6800-TD128E cards is either faster or at least equal to a single GeForce 6800 GT, with a few exceptions. So, it will make sense to buy two GeForce 6800 instead of one GeForce 6800 GT only if the former configuration costs the same or a little more money.

The NV42 chip showed an impressive overclocking potential, speeding up by 40% without special cooling methods. This result is close to a miracle since we’re talking about a modern graphics processor. Unfortunately, the chip comes out rather late: NVIDIA is expected to replace the entire GeForce 6 series with the GeForce 7 line which offers more performance and has advantages from the manufacturing point of view. So, even considering the low cost of the NV42 chip, we doubt GeForce 6800 graphics cards will be transferred to the mainstream market where they would be unrivalled champions in speed.

Highs:

• Supports Shader Model 3.0, OpenEXR HDR, HDTV
• SLI-ready
• Low power consumption
• Quiet cooler
• High overclockability
• Compact size

Lows:

• The memory frequency is lower than in the reference design
• Lower 2D quality in 1600x1200 than with the competing solutions
• A limited set of accessories