NVIDIA has today added to it's GeForce 6 line-up with a new model, the 6800 GS. With the top of NVIDIA's new GeForce 7 lineup readily available now, where does the 6800 GS fit in?
Clocked at 425MHz core and with 1GHz GDDR3 memory, the 6800 GS has a core speed faster than that of the 6800 Ultra, which is now out of production. However, the GS only has 12 pixel pipelines and 5 vertex engines, compared to the 16/6 of its 6800 Ultra and GT brethren, dropping its fillrate below that of the GT. So, to answer the question simply, 6800 GS fits in between the 6800 GT and standard 6800.
The usual compliment of GeForce 6 goodies is supported. There's SLI support, should dual 6800 GS float your boat, along with PureVideo, HDTV and HDR support. NVIDIA claim there's enough grunt in a GS to play modern games at 1280x1024 resolution with 4xAA and 8xAF turned on. This resolution remains, for the time-being at least, the max that the majority of TFTs will support, and so is considered the sweet-spot for graphics performance.
Presence of the GS within the NVIDIA drivers has been known for a while now, so the launch of this card was inevitable. However, will it fit into NVIDIA's product lineup nicely? Look at the range of NVIDIA cards, restricted to GeForce 6 and 7, and we see a nice spread of products across the performance range. However, remember also that 6600 upwards support SLI, and any seeming gaps might be plugged. Perhaps we'll have to see what add-in-board partners do with GS before we see whether the new card proves popular.
Expect to see a full review of the 6800 GS from us in due course, and no doubt we'll be bringing you a look at solutions from various add-in-board partners.
