PCB Design

Complying with the theory, the MSI NX6800-TD128E is really smaller than early GeForce 6800 cards and uses a simpler PCB.

The power circuitry is however more complex than on such graphics cards as NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT, ATI RADEON X800 and ATI RADEON X800 XL. The positioning of the memory chips at an angle of 45 degrees raises the price of the card further. On the other hand, the manufacturing cost of this card can hardly be much higher than that of ATI’s RADEON X800 cards since 256-bit memory buses and 8-layer PCBs are used in both cases, so the manufacturers have little elbowroom in cutting the costs.

The MSI NX6800-TD128E is equipped with a simple aluminum heatsink painted like it is made of copper. Like with many today’s graphics cards, the fan is placed a little away of the graphics core so that the air stream better cooled the heatsink ribs right above the chip. The heatsink also cools the memory chips, thus increasing their overclockability somewhat. The cooling system touches the GPU through a layer of gray-colored thermal paste and the memory chips through special thermal pads.

As we said above, the MSI NX6800-TD128E carries 128 megabytes of memory on board (and has seats for as many memory chips for the MSI NX6800-TD256E model). These are 128Mb 2.8ns DDR chips from Hynix rated for 700MHz frequency and working at 2.5V voltage (the voltage is reduced: DDR memory usually works at 2.6V, and modules clocked at 500MHz and higher work at up to 2.8V). The graphics card offers one D-Sub, one DVI-I and one universal TV-out connector.

It was an unpleasant surprise for us to see that our sample of the MSI NX6800-TD128E worked at 325/600MHz frequencies (GPU/memory), while NVIDIA’s recommended clock rates for the GeForce 6800 are 325MHz GPU and 700MHz memory.

The MSI NX6800-TD128E is a compact device and its cooler has protecting inserts to prevent any damage to the graphics core, so the installation should go without a hitch. A good point about this graphics card is that it doesn’t require external power. Thus, the MSI NX6800-TD128E might be an optimal choice for computers with low-power power supplies.