Colin McRae Rally 2005

1280x960 above

1600x1200 above

Unlike the NFSU2 results, we can see that both cards are capable of playing this game at high resolutions with all the eye candy. Only at 1600x1200 does the 6800 GT drop a little low, but still maintaining playable conditions.

Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth

With all of the settings maxed out, you can tell that BFME is not such a simple game after all. Both cards were basically about the same, however, the X800XL did have slightly higher average FPS than the 6800 GT.

Image Quality

Gaming performance is not the only part of a graphics card that is important, the 2D image quality is just as important, if not more important, than the performance in 3D games. 2D image quality is basically the quality of text and graphics you see while using your computer to type up a word document, or surf the web, etc. In my experience using the card, text was crisp and clear, and there were no quality issues at all in a 2D aspect.

As far as 3D image quality, I didn’t notice any problems there either. Everything rendered as it should, and there were no artifacts or glitches in any of the testing I did.

Overclocking

While overclocking will differ from card to card, it always helps to have some sort of reference as to the capabilities of any given card. In overclocking the Asus Extreme N6800 GT, I was able to reach a stable speed of 439 MHz core, and 1141 MHz memory. That’s a fairly decent overclock from the stock speeds, and will definitely help benchmark scores a little.

Final Words

While there were a couple of tests that the X800XL clearly dominated, the 6800 GT performed very well in every test. As stated above, the image quality is superb, with no problems noticed at all. There is also the benefit of having shader 3.0 available, which ATI does not currently have. While there are not that many titles released that make use of shader 3.0 yet, there are a few performance enhancements, as well as few image quality enhancements that can be gained with shader 3.0, so having the ability to use it is always nice. And we definitely can not forget the SLI capabilities of the card. While most tests show that SLI doesn’t really help a lot, faster CPU’s and better optimized games should show that SLI is quite useful.

Overall, the Asus Extreme N6800 GT is an excellent card, with a decent accessory bundle. The aesthetics of the card are simple, yet look really nice and refined. And the performance isn’t too shabby either.

Pros: Aesthetically pleasing design, good performance, Shader 3.0 support, decent accessory bundle.

Cons: The X800XL does come out on top in a few tests.

Bottom Line: If you are looking at upgrading to PCI-Express, and think that SLI might be something you would be interested in, the Asus Extreme N6800 GT would make an excellent graphics card.

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