NVIDIA GeForce 6800 PCIe Graphics Card

Overview

The groundbreaking new NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6800 graphics processing units (GPUs) and their revolutionary technologies power worlds where reality and fantasy meet; worlds in which new standards are set for visual realism and quality, performance, and video functionality. The GeForce 6800 GPUs deliver powerful, elegant graphics to drench your senses, immersing you in unparalleled worlds of visual effects for the ultimate PC experience.

Features

CineFX 3.0 Shading Architecture

• Vertex Shaders
  • Support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Vertex Shader 3.0
  • Displacement mapping
  • Geometry instancing
  • Infinite length vertex programs
• Pixel Shaders
  • Support for DirectX 9.0 Pixel Shader 3.0
  • Full pixel branching support
  • Support for Multiple Render Targets (MRTs)
  • Infinite length pixel programs
• Next-Generation Texture Engine
  • Up to 16 textures per rendering pass
  • Support for 16-bit floating point format and 32-bit floating point format
  • Support for non-power of two textures
  • Support for sRGB texture format for gamma textures
  • DirectX and S3TC texture compression
  • Full 128-bit studio-quality floating point precision through the entire rendering pipeline with native hardware support for 32bpp, 64bpp, and 128bpp rendering modes

64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending

• Full floating point support throughout entire pipeline
• Floating point filtering improves the quality of images in motion
• Floating point texturing drives new levels of clarity and image detail
• Floating point frame buffer blending gives detail to special effects like motion blur and explosions

Intellisample 3.0 Technology

• Advanced 16x anisotropic filtering
• Blistering-fast antialiasing and compression performance
• New rotated-grid antialiasing removes jagged edges for incredible edge quality
• Support for advanced lossless compression algorithms for color, texture, and z-data at even higher resolutions and frame rates
• Fast z-clear
• High-resolution compression technology (HCT) increases performance at higher resolutions through advances in compression technology

UltraShadow II Technology

• Designed to enhance the performance of shadow-intensive games, like id Software’s Doom 3

TurboCache Technology

• Shares the capacity and bandwidth of dedicated video memory and dynamically available system memory for optimal system performance.

PureVideo Technology

• Adaptable programmable video processor
• MPEG video encode and decode
• High-definition MPEG-2 hardware acceleration
• High-quality video scaling and filtering
• DVD and HDTV-ready MPEG-2 decoding up to 1920x1080i resolutions
• Dual integrated 400 MHz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and including 2048 × 1536 at 85Hz
• Display gamma correction
• Microsoft® Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) supports multiple video windows with full video quality and features in each window

Advanced Display Functionality

• Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and including 2048×1536 at 85hz
• Dual DVO ports for interfacing to external TMDS transmitters and external TV encoders
• Full NVIDIA® nView™ multi-display technology capability

Advanced Engineering

• Designed for PCI Express x16
• Support for AGP 8X including Fast Writes and sideband addressing
• Designed for high-speed GDDR3 memory
• Advanced thermal management and thermal monitoring

NVIDIA® Digital Vibrance Control™ (DVC) 3.0

• DVC color controls
• DVC image sharpening controls

Operating Systems

• Windows XP
• Windows ME
• Windows 2000
• Windows 9X
• Macintosh OS, including OS X
• Linux

API Support

• Complete DirectX support, including the latest version of Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0
• Full OpenGL support, including OpenGL 2.0

GeForce 6 Series GPUs Features Comparison:

Feature GeForce 6800 Models GeForce 6600 Models GeForce 6200 Models GeForce 6200 w/Turbocache Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 SM 3.0 SM 3.0 SM 3.0 SM 3.0 Graphics Bus Technology AGP 8X/PCI Express AGP 8X/PCI Express AGP 8X/PCI Express PCI Express NVIDIA® Intellisample™ Technology 3.0 3.0 3.01 3.01 NVIDIA® SLI™ Technology X2 X2 n/a n/a NVIDIA® PureVideo™ Technology X3 X3 X3 X3 NVIDIA® TurboCache™ Technology n/a n/a n/a X4 64-bit Texture Filtering and Bending X X n/a n/a Effective Memory Interface 256-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128/64-bit Memory GDDR35 and DDR GDDR35 and DDR DDR DDR Process 0.13 micron 0.11 micron 0.11 micron 0.11 micron RAMDACs 400 MHz 400 MHz 400 MHz 400 MHz

1. GeForce 6200 models do not include compression technology.
2. NVIDIA SLI: Available on SLI-certified versions of GeForce 6800 Ultra, 6800 GT, 6800 GS, 6800, 6800 XT, 6800 LE, 6600 GT, 6600, and 6600 LE PCI Express GPUs only.
3. Features may vary by product.  Some features may require additional software.
4. Available on select GeForce 6200 models only.
5. GDDR3 – GeForce 6800 Ultra, 6800 GT, 6800 GS, and 6600 GT only.

NVIDIA Launches GeForce 6 Series—Biggest Performance and Feature Leap in Company History

3D Gaming Performance, Ultra-Realistic Graphics and On-Chip Video Processor Distinguish New Desktop GPUs

SANTA CLARA, CA—APRIL 14, 2004—NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, introduced today the NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6800 models of graphics processing units (GPUs) for high-performance desktop computers. The NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series, which includes the flagship GeForce 6800 Ultra and GeForce 6800, is designed to deliver:

• Industry-leading 3D performance- new superscalar 16-pipe architecture delivers more than twice that of current industry leading NVIDIA GPUs
• New features, including Microsoft DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 feature set – for ultra-realistic cinematic effects
• Unprecedented on-chip video processing engine – enabling high-definition video and DVD playback

“This is the biggest generation-to-generation performance leap that we have ever seen with a new GPU,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA.  “In addition to the raw performance increase, we had two fundamental strategies with the 6800 models.  First was to take programmability to the next level with the industry’s only GPU with Shader Model 3.0.  Second was to extend the reach of GPUs to the consumer electronics market with a powerful and fully programmable video processor capable of multiple video formats and ‘prosumer’ level image processing.”

“As DOOM 3 development winds to a close, my work has turned to development of the next generation rendering technology.  The NV40 is my platform of choice due to its support of very long fragment programs, generalized floating point blending and filtering, and the extremely high performance,” said John Carmack, president and technical director of id Software

Revolutionary New GeForce 6800 Architecture
The innovative 3D graphics architecture of the GeForce 6800 GPUs introduces many key new technologies that will drive the image quality and performance in 3D gaming, including:

• Blazingly Fast Graphics Performance:  With a revolutionary new 16 pipeline superscalar architecture and the world’s fastest GDDR3 memory, GeForce 6800 GPUs offer a staggering amount of graphics horsepower. Gaming performance is super charged with eight times the floating-point shader power, four times the shadow processing power and double the vertex processing power over last generation’s award winning GeForce FX architecture.
• Revolutionary New Feature Set: Built with full Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 support, the GeForce 6 Series was built to deliver ultra-realistic next-generation DirectX 9 titles. The GeForce 6800 GPUs give developer’s unlimited programmability, 32-bit shader precision, displacement mapping, geometry instancing and other features unique to the GeForce 6 Series.  In addition, this new GPU delivers full floating point support throughout the entire pipeline, GeForce 6800 GPUs vastly improve the quality of images in motion with floating point filtering. The new rotated-grid antialiasing feature removes jagged edges for incredible image quality and a new 16x anisotropic filtering mode adds clarity to textures.

“The NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series is a great leap forward in PC graphics, bringing next-generation Microsoft DirectX 9 rendering performance to new heights while continuing forward with the high-definition floating-point rendering, driver performance, and stability NVIDIA is famous for,” stated Tim Sweeney, Founder EPIC Games.  “As the first GPU supporting the new Pixel Shader 3.0 programming model, the GeForce 6 Series enables games to use entirely new rendering approaches and obtain higher performance per-pixel lighting, shadowing, and special effects than previously possible.”

“We appreciate NVIDIA”s continued support of Microsoft DirectX,” said Chris Donahue, Lead Technical Evangelist of the Windows Graphics and Gaming Team at Microsoft.  “We are eager to experience the hardware implementation NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series promises to bring to the market.”

• World’s first on-chip video processor: GeForce 6800 GPUs have a programmable video processing engine that delivers stunning high-definition video playback. Featuring support for MPEG encode and decode, as well as support for Windows Media Video 9 (WMV9), the GeForce 6800 delivers an amazing video experience when used with the Microsoft® Windows® Media Center Edition operating system. The GeForce 6800 also enables high-quality video playback on any window size, and has an integrated TV-encoder for direct-to-TV playback.

“Adobe is very excited about the programmable video features in these new NVIDIA GPUs. Many Adobe customers have already been enjoying the power of NVIDIA GPUs to create sophisticated 3D animations for the past year.  Our future products will take even more advantage of the new capabilities being unveiled in these GPUs,” said David Trescot, senior director, Digital Video Products at Adobe.

GeForce 6800 GPUs benefit from the renowned compatibility and reliability of the NVIDIA® ForceWare™ software featuring the NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture (UDA). In addition NVIDIA ForceWare delivers industry-leading software features such as custom game profiles, HDTV output, overclocking, multi-display support, and much more.

Availability
The first GPUs based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series, the GeForce 6800 Ultra and GeForce 6800 models, are manufactured using IBM’s high-volume 0.13-micron process technology and are currently shipping to leading add-in-card partners, OEMs, system builders, and game developers.

Retail graphics boards based on the GeForce 6800 models are slated for release in the next 45 days.