While the GeForce 6800-series of graphics chips is generally considered as a one that consumes loads of power, some makers of graphics cards prepare versions of their products based on the GeForce 6800 graphics processing unit with passive cooling, something that so far has been a prerogative of Powered by ATI graphics cards.

Gigabyte Technology, a well-known maker of graphics cards and mainboards, recently started to sell its GV-N68128DH graphics card that is based on the GeForce 6800 graphics processor, is equipped with 128MB of GDDR3 memory and cooled down by a cooler that does not require any additional fans that cause noise and, because of large sizes, does not allow to install add-in cards into slots near AGP. Gigabyte’s latest offering is probably one of the most compact and silent GeForce 6800-based solutions.

The NVIDIA GeForce 6800-series of chips unveiled in mid-April are the company’s flagship products in the GeForce 6-series of graphics processors. The GeForce 6-series of graphics processors will be eventually available across entry-level, mainstream, performance-mainstream, high-end as well as so-called ultra high-end graphics cards. The new series of NVIDIA’s graphics processors is the company’s second generation lineup of DirectX 9.0-compatible offerings that greatly leverage the feature-set of NVIDIA GeForce FX graphics chips and brings important additional capabilities, such as Shader Model 3.0, as well as great performance improvements over the previous generation hardware. Both NVIDIA’s officials and observers initially claimed that the 6800-family requires extremely powerful power-supply units.

So far NVIDIA has unveiled 4 GeForce 6800-series graphics processors: the GeForce 6800 Ultra, GeForce 6800 GT, GeForce 6800 and GeForce 6800 LE that differ by clock-speed, the number of rendering pipelines as well as type of memory they work with. The “Ultra” and “GT” models feature 16 pixel processors and 128MB of GDDR3 memory, the standard model sports 12 pipes and uses 128MB of DDR memory, the “LE” flavour boasts only 8 pixel pipelines and 128MB of memory.

“The GeForce 6800 devours only about 39W under maximum load, which leaves loads of space for those manufacturers who want to use passive cooling systems with the GeForce 6800-based graphics cards,” said Tim Tscheblockov, a graphics analyst for X-bit labs.

Gigabyte’s GV-N68128DH retails for $364 - $384 in Tokyo, Japan, according to report from Akiba PC Hotline. Graphics cards in the EU and the USA are generally cheaper compared to those in Japan.