ASUSTeK V9999/TD 6800 128MB AGP
Cost from ebuyer :£105 inc Vat
I went for this card recently to replace my rather outdated GeForce 6200. I chose this card in particular as it seemed the best value for money at the time. Weighing in as one of the best AGP cards available (pre AGP 7800GS) I was confident this card wouldn't fail to satisfy all my gaming needs
Tested on:
1GB dual channel OCZ pc3200
AMD XP Athlon 3200+ @ 2.35 GHz
MSI KT880 Detla
Optronix true 400W
15" CRT monitor @ 1024x768
Service:
Firstly I would like to give props to Ebuyer for their swift service, delivery, and representation of the card on their site.
Arrival:
First impressions of the overall package was a bit confusing, I did for a moment think that I may have recieved the wrong package. The box is massive compaired to your average graphic card box and the design on the front can only really be described as tacky, but thats just personal preference.
inside:
Whats included:
• One Asus 6800 AGP (naturally)
• Leather case (see below) with several driver / software discs and games (see below)
• One manual (note below)
• One DVI - VGA adapter
• One S-Video-video out cable
• One S-video to S-video cable
Discs included:
Medi@Show SE 2.0
ASUS multi language manual
ASUS DVD
Driver and utillity disc
Battle Engine Aquila
Gun Metal
Demo disc with 6 games
DeusEx Invisible war
Note: The manual is a little limited in its instructions and is most probably translated from another language, so if this is a first time graphic card installation I suggest you seek reference on how to do it safely elsewhere on this site.
Aesthetics:
The size of the card itself reflects the size of the packaging, its massive, measuring in at 21.5CM x 9.8CM.
One small hindrance I should mention that I discovered upon installation is the positioning of the molex power connector on the card; it's located on the underside of the card, which makes reaching it difficult for some power supplies, I personally had to rewire my entire case
Unfortunately I have no photographs of the cards face outside of the case so I have found this one:
photo courtesy of ASUSTeK
The fan you see above puts out a mediocre amount of air and quite a bit of noise (from what I can see this is down to the flimsy construction of the heatsink casing)
Oh and it also glows blue
So thats the aesthetics side of it, now for the good-stuff:
Tech:
Features:
3rd iteration of CineFX architecture
Shader Model 3.0
IntelliSample 3.0 anti-aliasing
Improved anisotropic filtering
Ultra Shadow II technology
These are basically the standard features of the GeForce 6 range with a little improvement added
Interface: AGP
Memory:128MB
Clock speed: 325MHz
Memory clock: 700MHz DDR
Bandwidth: 24.8 GB/s
GPU Chip: NV40
Process Technology: 133 nm
Die Size: 28.7 mm2
Pixel Pipelines: 12 (unlocks to 16)
Vertex Shaders: 5 (unlocks to 6)
Pixel / Textel fill rate: 5184 Mpixels/s
Bus width: 256bit
Max Resolution: 2048x1536
Idle Temp: 43*C
Load Temp: 55*C
(NB: Only the AGPs NV40 chip unlocks to 16/6, not the PCI-E version)
Benchmarks:
The benchmarks were carried out on Futurmark's 3Dmark 2003, 3Dmark 2005 and the Steam stress test. Benchmarks were not taken from 3dmark 2006 as, frankly, I do not believe this card would make it through the test. This is by no means a low-end card but top-end SLI and Crossfire setups are only falling at around 5000 marks.
results:
3Dmark 03 stock (1024x768): 10370
3Dmark 03 unlocked (1024x768): 13981
3Dmark 05 stock (1024x768): 3340
3Dmark 05 unlocked (1024x768): 4435
("unlocked" also carries an overclock of 400 / 800)
Artifacts at: ~410MHz / ~810MHz
Steam stress test: 110 fps
3Dmark05 results
The overall in-game performance is fantastic especially considering the price of the card. Counterstrike: Source runs 70-80 fps with all settings maxed with AAx4 and AFx8 with a resolution of 1024x768. FEAR runs smoothly and while not running at max settings, still looks phenomenal and pulls off perfectly playable frames.
Conclusion:
• Overall this card is fantastic value for money, especially if overclocking is planned (It hits artifacting at around 410/810 (stock voltage))
• Cooling, however, is of major importance, especially with the stock heatsink and fan. Currently the card is running under a Zalman VF-700 Cu and runs at 45*C / 33*C when idle and 50*C / 37*C at load.
• The management software that is included in the package is quite useful, easy to use and allows perfectly adequate control / monitoring
• The included ASUS drivers dont quite cut it to be honest and I have opted for the latest Nvidia forceware and I also feel the 128MB ram on the card is holding it back massively. However please do not let this put you off, this card is perfectly capable of running all modern games at mid to max settings. Its rival over in the ATI camp would most probably, going by benchmarks, come in as a higher-range X1600 .
• If your looking to stay with AGP for a while and dont have money to throw around, save up and get this, stick a new cooler on it and crank up those clock speeds. You will not regret it.
Cost from ebuyer :£105 inc Vat
I went for this card recently to replace my rather outdated GeForce 6200. I chose this card in particular as it seemed the best value for money at the time. Weighing in as one of the best AGP cards available (pre AGP 7800GS) I was confident this card wouldn't fail to satisfy all my gaming needs
Tested on:
1GB dual channel OCZ pc3200
AMD XP Athlon 3200+ @ 2.35 GHz
MSI KT880 Detla
Optronix true 400W
15" CRT monitor @ 1024x768
Service:
Firstly I would like to give props to Ebuyer for their swift service, delivery, and representation of the card on their site.
Arrival:
First impressions of the overall package was a bit confusing, I did for a moment think that I may have recieved the wrong package. The box is massive compaired to your average graphic card box and the design on the front can only really be described as tacky, but thats just personal preference.
inside:
Whats included:
• One Asus 6800 AGP (naturally)
• Leather case (see below) with several driver / software discs and games (see below)
• One manual (note below)
• One DVI - VGA adapter
• One S-Video-video out cable
• One S-video to S-video cable
Discs included:
Medi@Show SE 2.0
ASUS multi language manual
ASUS DVD
Driver and utillity disc
Battle Engine Aquila
Gun Metal
Demo disc with 6 games
DeusEx Invisible war
Note: The manual is a little limited in its instructions and is most probably translated from another language, so if this is a first time graphic card installation I suggest you seek reference on how to do it safely elsewhere on this site.
Aesthetics:
The size of the card itself reflects the size of the packaging, its massive, measuring in at 21.5CM x 9.8CM.
One small hindrance I should mention that I discovered upon installation is the positioning of the molex power connector on the card; it's located on the underside of the card, which makes reaching it difficult for some power supplies, I personally had to rewire my entire case
Unfortunately I have no photographs of the cards face outside of the case so I have found this one:
photo courtesy of ASUSTeK
The fan you see above puts out a mediocre amount of air and quite a bit of noise (from what I can see this is down to the flimsy construction of the heatsink casing)
Oh and it also glows blue
So thats the aesthetics side of it, now for the good-stuff:
Tech:
Features:
3rd iteration of CineFX architecture
Shader Model 3.0
IntelliSample 3.0 anti-aliasing
Improved anisotropic filtering
Ultra Shadow II technology
These are basically the standard features of the GeForce 6 range with a little improvement added
Interface: AGP
Memory:128MB
Clock speed: 325MHz
Memory clock: 700MHz DDR
Bandwidth: 24.8 GB/s
GPU Chip: NV40
Process Technology: 133 nm
Die Size: 28.7 mm2
Pixel Pipelines: 12 (unlocks to 16)
Vertex Shaders: 5 (unlocks to 6)
Pixel / Textel fill rate: 5184 Mpixels/s
Bus width: 256bit
Max Resolution: 2048x1536
Idle Temp: 43*C
Load Temp: 55*C
(NB: Only the AGPs NV40 chip unlocks to 16/6, not the PCI-E version)
Benchmarks:
The benchmarks were carried out on Futurmark's 3Dmark 2003, 3Dmark 2005 and the Steam stress test. Benchmarks were not taken from 3dmark 2006 as, frankly, I do not believe this card would make it through the test. This is by no means a low-end card but top-end SLI and Crossfire setups are only falling at around 5000 marks.
results:
3Dmark 03 stock (1024x768): 10370
3Dmark 03 unlocked (1024x768): 13981
3Dmark 05 stock (1024x768): 3340
3Dmark 05 unlocked (1024x768): 4435
("unlocked" also carries an overclock of 400 / 800)
Artifacts at: ~410MHz / ~810MHz
Steam stress test: 110 fps
3Dmark05 results
The overall in-game performance is fantastic especially considering the price of the card. Counterstrike: Source runs 70-80 fps with all settings maxed with AAx4 and AFx8 with a resolution of 1024x768. FEAR runs smoothly and while not running at max settings, still looks phenomenal and pulls off perfectly playable frames.
Conclusion:
• Overall this card is fantastic value for money, especially if overclocking is planned (It hits artifacting at around 410/810 (stock voltage))
• Cooling, however, is of major importance, especially with the stock heatsink and fan. Currently the card is running under a Zalman VF-700 Cu and runs at 45*C / 33*C when idle and 50*C / 37*C at load.
• The management software that is included in the package is quite useful, easy to use and allows perfectly adequate control / monitoring
• The included ASUS drivers dont quite cut it to be honest and I have opted for the latest Nvidia forceware and I also feel the 128MB ram on the card is holding it back massively. However please do not let this put you off, this card is perfectly capable of running all modern games at mid to max settings. Its rival over in the ATI camp would most probably, going by benchmarks, come in as a higher-range X1600 .
• If your looking to stay with AGP for a while and dont have money to throw around, save up and get this, stick a new cooler on it and crank up those clock speeds. You will not regret it.
