6800GT : MSI's answer Posted on 02/02/2005 at 15:06 by Marc
Last January 31, we have published this new about the MSI NX6800GT-T2D256E graphic card. It appeared that even if this graphic card featured 256 MB GDDR3 memory and NV45 chip, it only had 12 pixel pipelines and 5 vertex engines activated instead of 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex engines for any GeForce 6800 GT.
MSI today, published a rather disturbing official answer. First, the manufacturer precised that all chips are NV45 and not NV41. It is important to remember that 6800AGP graphic cards are using castrated (6800GT / Ultra) NV40 (16 pipelines but only 12 activated), and that 6800 PCI Express graphic cards are using NV41 chips and not castrated NV45 (NV40+HSI). NV41 chips have 12 pipelines and support natively PCI Express.
The manufacturer announced then that two NV45 versions exist, that it is currently using the 12 pipelines version and will release in a few days the 16 pipelines version. MSI confirms that it is currently selling GeForce 6800GT PCI Express providing only 75% pixel power processing and 83% vertices power processing of a “real” 6800 GT (with 16 pipelines).
The NX6800GT-T2D256E product pages indicates that the graphic card fill rate is 5.6 billions of texels/sec. This figure corresponds to 16 pipelines at 350 MHz… 12 pipelines at 350 MHz only provides 4.2 milliards of texels/sec ...
Last January 31, we have published