Digital Trends

MSI NX6800 128MB

September 15th, 2004 | by Dan Gaul

Feature and Design

As was mentioned in our introduction, there are three series of graphics cards in the Nvidia 6800 product line. MSI's NX6800 video card is a regular 6800 based video card which bridges the gap between the GeForce 6800 GT and GeForce 5900/5950 video cards. Nvidia's 6800 series of cards are based on their new NV40 graphics processing unit and features support for the latest DirectX API, DirectX 9.0c. What this means is that the 6800 series supports Pixel Shader and Vertex Shader 3.0. Because this appears to be the only difference between 9.0c and previous versions of DirectX 9, Microsoft has opted to keep this incremental update as version “c” rather than calling it DirectX 9.1 altogether. ATI's new X800 series of graphics cards do not support this new version of DirectX. Is this that big of a deal? The answer is yes and no. A few months ago we probably would have said no, but with new updates for games like Far Cry, Battlefield Vietnam, Pain Killer, Serious Sam 2 and more which adds DirectX 9.0c capabilities, hardcore gamers may be looking for their video cards to support the new version.

Based on the NV40 architecture, the NX6800 bears a similar resemblance to the 6800 GT and Ultra series of cards, but is “crippled” so as to perform on par with its price. This means the NX6800 has a core clock speed of 325MHz compared to 350MHz for the GT version and 400MHZ for the Ultra version.  The pixel pipelines on the NX6800 are limited to 12 pipelines versus 16 for the two other versions. The graph below will show the differences between the three 6800 cards:

So while the NX6800 might not be the fastest card in the 6800 product line, MSI has gone to great lengths to make this card a solid value. The packaging that the NX6800 comes in gives you the feeling you are buying something important. The box is larger than normal and the look and overall presentation are top-notch. $400 dollars is a lot of money, especially in an industry that has a six-month product lifecycle. Slapping a reference board into a generic box and selling it for that much money just won't fly with today's demanding gamers.

MSI has used some colorful acrylic with fancy graphics to make the card look very high-end. On the card itself, MSI has gone with their traditional red PCB and has added a very stylish and high quality copper heat sink and cooling system. Fortunately the design of the NX6800 allows it to be in a single slot. The 6800 Ultra card featuring cooling hardware that is so large that is takes up two PCI slots in your computer — not to mention two separate power supply connectors.  The copper cooler on the NX6800 features an embedded 70mm cooling fan just to the left of the GPU and is designed to help vent the air away from the card. MSI includes a slider lever which allows you to manually adjust the speed of the GPU fan. So if you have plenty of cooling in your system already and the noise level of the NX6800 is just too loud for you, you can slide the lever to the left to slow down the speed of the fan. We recommend keeping the fan speed up all the way to help prevent any sort of heat related issues which can cause your system to lock up.

MSI includes three video outputs connectors, a traditional analog VGA output, a Digital DVI output and S-video output so you can hook up the card to various monitors. The real treat to the NX6800 package however is the amount of software which MSI includes with it. Prince of Persia, XIII, Splinter Cell, and Uru are just a few of the 17 games which come with the NX6800. Add to that 20 utility programs and MSI's own Media Center Deluxe II software and you have several hundred dollars worth of software on 14 CD's; and these are full versions, not trial versions of these popular games.