Doom 3 is
the most advanced OpenGL game to date. It takes advantage of the latest
videocard technology and pushes the processing power of the CPU to its absolute
limits. At its highest setting, Ultra quality, texture sizes pass the 500MB mark
which means even tomorrow's videocards will have a hard time running everything.
The frame rates in the game itself are locked at 60 fps so anything above that point is
wasted. Each test is run three times and with the third run being
recorded.
Doom 3 framerates don't really suffer until we turn on 8x
AA. Gamers who like eye candy will love the fact that the game is perfectly
playable with 4xAA and 16x AF!
It's Fast, and it's Quiet
If you haven't guessed already, the MSI NX6800GT-T2D256E
is one fast videocard.
With AA/AF enabled the NX6800GT-T2D256E still remains
very competitive and should provide decent framerates along with a beautiful
image. All this performance yet the videocard is extremely quiet even when the
fan is set to its fastest speed! We really do see MSI work some magic with the
NX6800GT-T2D256E.
While SLI is an expensive
route to go for gamers, many are simply buying a high end card now and will team
that card up later with an identical model. The MSI NX6800GT-T2D256E is an
excellent videocard for those gamers who demand excellent framerates for games
right now and who want to go SLI in the future, although we were unable to test
its SLI performance in this review (a second card was not supplied by the
manufacturer for testing).
With the recent WHQL release of the Forceware 71.84,
users can now create their own SLI profiles for games. That means just because a
title is not natively supported doesn't mean you can't experience SLI; go and
create your own custom profile and you're set!
Based on the nVIDIA GeForce 6800GT core, this MSI
videocard comes with a ton of goodies. First there's a huge software package
that accompanies the card, 14 CDs worth of
software which includes three full version games. The videocard only supports
S-Video output and not component out, but this isn't really suited for home
theatre capabilities either. With two DVI ports, the MSI NX6800GT-T2D256E is a
good option for those of you who want not just to run dual monitors but to use
dual digital LCDs! MSI includes one DVI to analog converter; they should have
included two.
Our test card was a pretty decent overclocker, hitting
416 MHz core and 1.16 GHz memory which is higher than the default settings of
GeForce 6800 Ultra cards. In most applications this speed increase gave the
NX6800GT-T2D256E a pretty decent performance boost. Consequently it consistently
battled it out with the MSI RX800XT-VTD256E and the various 6600GT SLI setups for top
spot, winning most of the time.
With a retail price of $533 CDN ($444 US), the MSI
NX6800GT-T2D256E is actually a pretty good deal when you compare it to
higher-end GeForce 6800 Ultra and Radeon X850XT PE videocards. If you're a gamer
looking for something high-end in PCI Express that comes with a lot of features
and the possibility of some SLI action, look no further.
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Doom 3
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