by Josh Walrath

Board Impressions

     The first thing that pops out when looking at this product is the massive size of the box. Obviously the thinking behind this is “bigger is better” and it is easily the most visible box in the video card section if it is seen in retail. It is also shiny, and has two somewhat unhappy looking men glaring from the box. The size and design could easily be a turnoff for many users who are not as well versed in the technology contained within the box. Also, shipping for a box this size does add to the price.

Yet another angry looking individual on the heatsink.  The board's colors are pretty bright, and perhaps if it were me, I would have chosen something a bit more subdued.  As it stands, the fan is very quiet, and it cools the chip and memory down very well.

     Going past the box, Chaintech does add a lot of value to their product. The software bundle is significantly better than most. It comes with Commands 3, a 5 in 1 game disk that features 5 older demos, a full version of WinDVD, WinDVD Creator, WinRIP, and Adobe Photoshop Album 1.0. While we could have done away with the demo disk, Commandos 3 is a decent game, and the WinDVD products are certainly welcome. Along with the driver disk is the GOSU utility. GOSU stands for Graphics Overclocking System Utility. This little number is a nice graphical tool to dynamically overclock the card, as well as adjust all of the major video card functions (AA, AF, image quality, etc.) This turned out to be a very useful tool, and worked fine with the latest 61.77 drivers.

The gold back plate does seem a bit much, but the color of it doesn't necessarily take away from the performance.  The single slot design is a great step forward for NVIDIA with a product of this stature.

     There is also an S-Video cable, an AV cable, a S-Video to AV adapter, a DVI to VGA adapter, and a molex power splitter. Inside is also a green fuzzball that works very nicely as a monitor cleaner. Chaintech didn’t hold back on the bundle, and when a user first opens the box they are always greeted by the sight of the video card surrounded by extras. This is one area where Chaintech has excelled with their video card strategy. People always like to get more stuff for the same amount of money.

     The card itself is based on NVIDIA’s reference design, as well as the cooler. What is not reference is the speed it is at. Chaintech decided to overclock the AA6800 out of the box, and not by an insignificant amount. The stock 6800 should run at 325 MHz core and 350 MHz DDR (700 MHz effective), but Chaintech clocks this up to 358 MHz core and 385 MHz DDR (770 MHz effective). This is a 10% overclock, and it handles this speed with aplomb. Only one power connector is needed with this model, and the single slot design will surely gain praise from users all around.

From top to bottom: GeForce 6800, GeForce FX 5900 XT, and the Radeon 9800 XT.  The GeForce 6800 is most definitely not a small card in comparison.

     Installation of the drivers and utilities were not a hassle, and very quickly the system was up and running. One shortcoming of this card is that its 2D image quality is not quite as sharp as products from other manufacturers. This is something that I have noticed on a few Chaintech cards before. When using this card at higher resolutions, the image becomes slightly blurred. This isn’t terribly noticeable unless the monitor is right next to another competing product’s monitor. Then a small difference can be seen. The Sapphire Radeon cards all have very sharp 2D, as well as the previously reviewed BFG Tech GeForce FX 5700. The Chaintech GeForce 6800 just shows a slight sign of blurriness. This may or may not be a factor for users buying this card, as it really is only a slight blur.

The backs also tell a small tale.  The 9800XT uses the copper plate to cool the memory, but neither of the NVIDIA cards have memory located on the back.  The retention plate on the 6800 (top) is the main reason why there is no wiggle in the heatsink.  It is very well anchored.

     Overall the card is well built, the components are on there tight, and there is no wiggle to the heatsink/fan. Construction appears good, and the card is pretty clean.

Next: Test Setup
 

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