Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT Unleashed 

There are so many reviews of the new stuff and it is so good to see things like this covering the older technology, that can still pack a punch! Keep it up! 👍

Your 6800 GT reminds me of my FX 5700 Ultra by Chaintech which had 2 fans and blue LED lighting as well. With my P4 Rig I had a Geforce 6800 and it was a beast of a card and I played alot of Doom3 back in the day.

Never realized how identical Doom 3 and Quake 4 are.

Awesome Phil, this is very nostalgic for me as the 6800gt was the first decent mid/high range card I ever owned! Wish I had kept it now...

The moment when your favorite review channel is reviewing your favorite graphics card

The last Geforce 6800 I ordered was DOA, nice to see that it is holding up well in retro titles, ill be honest that I still prefer my X800, but the Geforce 6800 is becoming a much more common option over here, in terms of pricing and availability.

I'm finally coming back and watching your videos more again. RU-vid buried them in my sub feed and I forgot how great this channel is!

I bought this exact card in 2004 for $400 so I could play doom3 in all it's glory! It was a nice feeling having the top of the line GPU. Then shortly after was the 7800gt, and I was like damn it! Then is seemed like the 8800gt was out in no time, ahhhh!!!

Brilliant! Always been one of my favorite cards. I remember lusting after one in school. I only had a 6200 at the time. I made a retro dream PC a couple of years ago with a 6800 Ultra and 3.2GHz Gallatin Pentium 4 extreme edition.

The 6800 GT was my first proper graphics card that I ever bought! Had a WinFast A400 (256MB 6800GT with a stupidly heavy custom cooler). I still vividly remember downloading a hi-res texture mod for Thief Deadly Shadows and being blown away by how realistic the game looked, and spending hours late at night in my University dorm room deeply engrossed in it. The 6800 GT also powered me through hundreds of hours of TES Oblivion when it first released. Great times!

Back in the day (I think it was 2003) I had a P4 3.0C GHz with HT and a GF FX 5900 Ultra on the i875P platform and I also upgraded to the GF 6800 GT. Later I upgraded to the Radeon HD 3850 AGP. I used that system until Sandy Bridge came out in 2011. I never thought I would ever use a system as long as this one again, but my i7 2600k is still going strong and will catch up and overtake next year. And compared to the P4 system the 2600k is still fast enough for everything I throw at it. I upgraded the graphics card to a 1080Ti last year, so I'm still good.

I actually remember my cousin got a gaming pc that was branded as FragBox. It was a mini-ITX computer that had an all clear acrylic body so you could see everything inside of it. Then to add to the aesthetic it had blue LED lighting including the cooling fans and it had this card in there. That was a cool little machine back then.

Thank you for this nice video, like the others. Back in 2004, I had a Point of View 6800 GT AGP, and changed the original cooler to a NV5 Silencer. Today in 2018, I have a Gigabyte GV-N68T256DH 6800 GT 256MB AGP with a nice hardware monitoring and also a NV5 Silencer.

Interesting review, very good analitical review

Never got one. I bought two 6600 gt to run them in SLI though. This good old times. :D Always nice to see this stuff in your videos. Gives me a bit the feeling to be back in time, listening to some actual tests.

Back in he day I had leadtek GF6800LE with the nice copper cooler. I was lucky and mine unlocked from 8/4 300/700Mhz to full 16/6 430/933Mhz so the performance was around 6800ultra. Shame for just 128MB of Vram but it was mostly enough back in the day. I started with it on Socket A, had it trough K8 era and I even build my first core 2 system on the Asrock I865 motherboard back then just so I could keep this card. Only in 2008 with the arrival of 8800GT I switched to PCI-E motherboard and that card. Good times and massice overclock. Nowadays you squish like 5-10% extra from your card, I got double the performance from my 6800LE hehe.

Performances in Most Wanted reminded of my GT 8600 air cooled passive.

I've never seen a cooler like that before. Good video.

Nice one as always Phil.

So many hours of Far Cry, Doom3, BF2, & CS: Source fun with my 6800GT back in the day.

ah i had this very card the BFG 6800GT was a monster when it came out

Shader 3 gave the 6800 series a long life.

Wow, this is a real blast from the past.

Finally got mine hooked up, its been a great card for me so far. Although i had more luck with the latest Omega driver which was made around 2007. It gives great performance, nice visual quality and doesn't have missing texture issues on the retail build of Half-Life 2. So for people wanting this card get the latest nvidia omega driver and if you want to run it in Win98 the stock 77.72 driver. Both drivers are very stable in my build and give great result. And phil, in case you read this it would be fun to see a driver recommendation video from this 2007 era. Both ati and nvidia cards had famous custom drivers availible that can get better gaming performance, fidelity or compatibility. So it would be fun seeing a comparison video what the best drivers are between stock 2007, ngo , omega and the latest driver. For me so far the omega driver is the winner.

I turned my 6800GS into a GT. Best free +4 pixel shader pipelines ever. Got me through Oblivion.

I just managed to snag one of these BFG 6800 GT OC cards on Ebay! Can't wait to put it into a retro AGP build and do some early-aughts throwback gaming :D

I had one of these in the Northwood core P4 system I built to play City of Heroes. Good card.

I had a graphics card of this moddle, I loved it so much. It was so good. I'm still trying to get another one.

The Geforce 6800/6600 cards were fantastic. I had a pair of 6600gt's (PCI-E) running in SLI with a socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 4400+. Those were 128mb cards, so I was a little limited when it came to resolution, relative to a 256mb 6800 GT.

I use one of these with my Tualatin-1575 system! A little out of place in such a system, but I can crank the resolution and details settings without ever running into a GPU bottleneck. Doom 3 at 1600x1200/Ultra, and at 47 fps, it's still being limited by the CPU.

I built a pc with the ultra version of this card for HL2 alone! Then quickly realized that buying the top spec of anything back then was a waste of money, as it became obsolete within a year and a half. Crysis came not even 3 years later, lol Prey was the first game that made me realize i'll have to upgrade sooner than later....The next setup was a 8800gtx and 4gb ram, amd athlon 64 x2 6400+ black edition, and from a 20' 1024x768 4:3 to a swanky 1600x900, 27' acer. That pc with the 8800 is still kicking to this day!

I had an fx5900xt (still got it, and it still works!) and upgraded it to a stock 6800 as I couldn't afford the gt. Lucky for me I was able to unlock the disabled quad of pixel pipelines and effectively make it into a gt. One vertex shader unit was damaged though so I had to leave it disabled. Anyway it all ran brilliantly on the xp3200 system I had at the time.

I had the 6800GT. It was my final AGP card. I had it paired with my Athalon 3200+XP for years. I ran that one until i built my Second Gen i5 system with a GT240.

Which version of the drivers do you recommend for this card? BTW I went ahead and bought that board and CPU and I've got to say, I'm pretty damn pleased with the result!

I chose 7600GT AGP over some 6800 about 10 years ago, they were quite equal on most terms, but the older card used more power. Used it with AMD Barton 2500+ on a NF2 mobo.

0:09 I miss Nvidia Nalu and ATI Ruby.......both companies have tried to 1984 all record of them and act like they never existed. you know these are dark times.

Did you notice those messages about "tiling screen in games", "vertical sync" appeared when geforce 7 cards was out? I didn't remember any kind of this problems in previous gen graphics cards

Bought a Gainward 6800 GT ‘Goes Like Hell’ edition back in the day which can be overclocked to that of an Ultra. It cost a fortunate back then so I never parted with it and it still goes like hell to this day! A extremely reliable card. 👍

Did these era of BFG cards have some kind of pins for external connectivity? Engineering samples only?

I did want the GeForce 6 series after seeing it in a magazine, but I waited long enough for the GeForce 7800 GTX and a Athlon 64 X2. That was certainly a nice upgrade from my Athlon XP/Geforce FX 5600 system

I couldn't afford a 6800GT, i was pretty young when it came out. So i gambled and bought a 6800LE to try and unlock it's pipes, i managed to unlock it from 8/4 to 12/6 pixel pipes and vertex shaders and it overclocked very well.

I came back and rewatch this video because I got a XFX6800 XT PCIe from a free PC with AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+. Currently keeping these things until a few years later that they become more valuable. It also has a high end Asus A8N-SLI deluxe motherboard

I had one of these with a Pentium 4. I also had a GeForce 5800. It's performance is better than people give it credit for!!

Audigy 2 ZS was awesome. Have the same card on my 2nd PC.

Holy wow what sound card are you using ?

A friend had this very same card and it died twice. I had to hand carry it both times to the US as BFG didn't have an RMA center in India.

I had one of the more expensive 6800 back in the day.It was the gigabyte 6800 gt vanilla if i can remember correct.It came out with pipe cooling no fans.It came out with 12 pipe line but 4 could be unlocked through riva tuner.Was a beast on my old p4 3ghz north wood

I remember I got an AOpen 6800GT 256MB back in late 2004. Can't remember when I got rid of it though. I got a Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB AGP in 2006, but kept the 6800GT as a spare.

I have this card but the fans are really loud, like the bearings need to be lubed. What oil should I use and how would I put the oil in the fan bearing?

I own a eVGA 6800 GT, great card back in the day.

Really nice card, I hope someday you will get the 6800 Ultra AGP to do some comparisons :) There's probably someone who already asked you but how do you capture gameplay ? It's such a good quality I'm always impressed ! Thanks in advance :)

hey Phil and all, recently bought a 6800 card that on the back has a resistor (or some other part) missing its protective (and very slim) sheath ... wondering if I can just super-glue it back on or if it even matters... can send a pic of said resistor next to other like it; again on the back of the card, next to the bottom DVI solders leads. Thanks!

hello Phil which capture card you have used? I'm searching for a capture card which i can record old games from my old PC with old graphic cards without Power Loss. I need VGA and DVI. Any suggestions? Thanks

Very nice and interesting! As always. CPU let do this gpu it’s best.

I upgraded my agp ATi radeon 9800pro 128mb to pci-e xfx geforce 6800gt. I was a radeon fan but i could not find x800xt instock so i opted for 6800gt. It had same specs as 6800 ultra except core clock was down from 400mhz to 350mhz. Fortunately for me my card overclocked happily to 400mhz so i was happy camper back then 😊. It was fast enough card to enjoy far cry & doom 3 at 1280x1024 resolution. It also did ok in half-life 2 finally allowing dx9 mode to work

It's funny how the performance decreases at each Need for Speed iteration

I got the GeForce 6800gt Ultra red not sure if theres a difference?

I had an FX5600. Meeh but it had the best video capture onboard for the time.

I had the EVGA 6800 GT in my old Athlon XP 3200+ system. Was pretty upset when I bought a Pentium D system a few months later and realized it had no AGP slot... ended up putting it on a shelf and buying a PCIe 6600GT. Years later I tested it and got massive artifacts in games so I tossed it. Then recently I put the Athlon 3200+ back together and the 7600GS I tried in it did the exact same thing until I found drivers it liked...so kicking myself some more. I also missed one by 4 hours on Craigslist that was the same EVGA one, in the original box, and for $10.

Had the 6800GTS. With 12 pipeline, where you could unlock the last 4 pipelines and have 6800GT with a little lower clock.

I really like your content. I would be interested in you testing a PCI-E 8600 GTS 256mb if you haven't already. It is the card I'm using in my xp machine.

Is this still card good for an overkill Win 98 build?

I got a 6600gt from ebay I was going to put it into a dell dimension 4550 but decided to build a new system, I bought a jetway board and am waiting for that to arrive next week I just wish more cases from 2003 were still easy to by I had to settle for a roswill case as a coolermaster wavemaster was 140 dollers and was also used

Anyone knows how many agps and how many pci-e 6800 GT were build in total? More agp or pci-e?

I just built something with this GPU I found and am going to use it for media and just casual at home computer use for people who have to be doing school from work.

Great video! Could you make a video on this card in a Win98 or ME system? I plan to build a system with a Geode NX and this card and would love a video about its compatibility for Win98 games! I owned an Athlon Thunderbird back in the days that died to overclocking and want to rebuild a powerful A3D machine for Unreal, GTA and Counter Strike.

I did have a 6800 GT back in the mid oughts. It was my last AGP card, as my next one would be the e-Geforce 7800 GT. I think it was EVGA

That's the card that I'd like to put in my older desktop pc with a Celeron 2.0 ghz. I believe it's from early 2003.

Ah yes, great memories of Rome TW, CS Sauce, and Oblivion on this.

JUst watching this review because the scalpers bought this instead of the 6800 XT lmao

Looking for a cheap (as possible) xp compatible gfx card that will max out any XP era game (1080p 60fps). Suggestions?

I remember those tech demo's, my pc failed horrible :)

Phil, can you review the GeForce 7950GT?

This was my first graphics card I bought for gaming.

I had an Albatron one back then

Good performance

My first gaming PC had a second hand 6800 Ultra and Pentium D.

I have 2 6800GT cards ones in my windows XP retro system and My Doom 3 edition card stays stored, I also had an XFX 6800GT when they were new and played Myst 5 and Doom 3 :) scary as hell on the 32 inch monitor back then lol

I still own a BFG 6600GT OCX, I never needed the 6800GT because of this card. I have fonder memories of this card than the BFG 8600GTS that replaced it eventually.

Have this exact card. I can't get unreal to run on it. It runs, but my screen goes black.

About overlay, I suggest that you install an old version of Afterburner and also install an old version of graphic driver too. Like 2.0 series afterburner will do the job. #PhilsComputerLab

Phil, did you hire a stunt driver? Either that or your driving skills have noticeably improved.

I have the same BFG card but in ultra version, its very nice, maybe I will use it again:)

I found this card in my closet I want to try using it but I can't find the disk do you need the disk

I had the 6800 NU and that cost like $400+. It was a hell of a card but I remember getting rid of it quicker than I thought I would. I don't recall why but it wasn't because I needed money or anything at the time.

Phil is PureVideo support worth downgrading to the 6600GT or 6200? Let me know. I want to get a card and Pentium 3 Tualatin 1.4Ghz upgrade for my setup. I want to watch 720p videos and don't know if the 6800GT can help with hardware decoding on other software or codecs. Thanks.

The dual tiny instead of one large fan era 😩

I had two BFG 6800's, this same 6800 GT OC model and a 6800 OC but they were kinda loud and all of them had a crack across the fans which was easily seen thanks to the clear plastic. (Common issue?) I also had a 6800 GT OC PNY with the reference fan design that worked quite well. I sold the BFGs cause I don't have all the room in the world. (I actually might have the 6800 OC still). Back in the day I did get an XFX 6800, nothing extra but coming from a DX8 card to the DX9 card, I noticed the enhancement in HL2 right away. HL2 should only be played with DX9.

I have the gainward golden sample version, they had cherry picked gpus with dual dvi, 410mhz on the gpu and 1100 ram, plays a lot of games at 1080p 60fps, 3d mark 01 SE on socket 754 with the 3700+ gets 16,050 points, so it seems the CPU is a huge bottleneck here on my system, think ill switch to socket 939 on the nforce4 chipset.

It's a card I'm looking for now, though the ones I see are generally cost more with shipping I'm willing to play. I'd like to compare it to my X800 XT. I remember GF6 being more future proof with SM3.0 support.

Awesome video Phil! Do you happen to have a 6600 GT video in the works? 😀

It is ridiculous how small a cooler you could get away with back then. A typical gtx 1080 has a cooler that could probably handle the entire system that card would normally plug into. Ended up here after looking at the recommended specs on my boxed copy of Oblivion.

I can match your results for FEAR fairly closely with my 6800GS PCIe, but I cannot get even close to the performance you show in Quake 4. I know you show 1280x1024 ultra details, but do you have any setting settings like AA turned off? Also what version of the game are you running?

Phil, what PSU did you use for this test? Is it safe to connect molex from modern PSU to this card as guys from e.g. SilentiumPC do not recommend connecting VGA to the molex connector to power the GPU?

if i remember correctly the 7x.xx drivers were the best and the 9x.xx drivers had the best compatibility

Half-Life 2 is hilarious. PS3 and X360 struggles with 30FPS in 720p, yet weaker 6800GT pushes it like nothing in 1080p XD.

Crysis as a Gametest would be pretty interesting

Phil At that time I bought all the cards.. ATI X800Pro 256Meg Quad pump special edition from Sapphire was the bomb back then.. But Nvidia cards were ok they had some artifacts wrong and bugs back then.. Some cards were outstanding ! others shit... but in the end if you did your research you got a great card that lasted a long time.

What has been your experience with the 6800 GT in Windows 98SE? I remember your mention (somewhere) of the 81.98 driver and Windows 98SE not working too well with the GeForce 6 series. Does it work well with older (DirectX 8.1 and earlier) games in Windows 98SE?

I just picked up a fan less version by gigabyte for about $30 usd excited to throw this in my pentium 4 system.