Graphics processor designer NVIDIA Corp. said Monday it was nothing new in the recently released facts about lower amount of geometry pipelines within the GeForce 6800 chips. The company said that the GeForce 6800 were originally said to have 5 vertex pipeline instead of 6 on higher-end GeForce 6800 models.

“That is not a big secret, we have communicated the exact spec: GeForce 6800 Ultra and GT are 6 vertex units and 16 pixel units, GeForce 6800 standard is 5 vertex units and 12 pixel pipes,” a spokesperson for NVIDIA told X-bit labs Monday.

When NVIDIA initially unveiled its GeForce 6800-series lineup it was believed that the GeForce 6800 Ultra and GeForce 6800 graphics processors featured equal number of geometry processors amid different amount of pixel processors and clock-speed. Now it turns out that at least some GeForce 6800 graphics processors feature less geometry processors than more advanced “Ultra” and “GT” models.

During the weekend an author of popular tweaking utility for graphics cards, Riva Tuner, released information about “lower than expected number of vertex processors inside the GeForce 6800”.

The GeForce 6800 Ultra packs in 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex pipelines, the GeForce 6800 GT reportedly integrates the same amount of pixel and vertex processors. The GeForce 6800 sports 12 pixel pipes, but it was unclear whether it has 5 or 6 geometry engines.

It is unclear why reference GeForce 6800 graphics card provided by NVIDIA Corp. and used by X-bit labs’ laboratory in Tallinn, Estonia, scored identical fps in Xbitmark and 3DMark03 vertex shader tests against NVIDIA’s reference GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics card working at the same clock-speeds, indicating equal per MHz geometry performance of the “Standard” model against the “Ultra” model.