Those of you who are sound sensitive will love the slider on the top of the NX6800GT-T2D256E videocard heatsink. It allows you to select the speed of the videocard fan, from 2800 RPM which is supposed to produce 30 dB of sound to 4000 RPM which makes about 39 dB of noise.

Even at full blast, this videocard is quiet, and you're certainly not going to notice it once the NX6800GT-T2D256E is installed into a case.

While the speed control feature works quite well we would have preferred a temperature controlled automatic switch instead of a dial as it's not always convenient to access the inside of the computer. Or, perhaps MSI could make this feature accessible through the MSI utility software that's included with the videocard? For the moment, it isn't.

The MSI NX6800GT-T2D256E is SLI compatible thanks to the little connector on the top left hand corner of the videocard, but since we only have one of these cards we won't be able to run any SLI tests in this review. Those of you who do plan to run SLI, make sure you buy two identical videocards! If not, you'll have problems getting SLI running as according to nVIDIA the two cards must have identical cores as well as vendor and videocard BIOS versions.

Overclocking the NX6800GT-T2D256E

By default, a GeForce 6800GT's core runs at 350 MHz while the memory hums along at a full 1 GHz. When you think about the price difference between the 6800GT and 6800 Ultra, it's pretty amazing that the card clock speeds are so close (350 MHz VS 400 MHz for core, 1 GHz VS 1.1 GHz for memory).

As usual we started with core overclocking first and instead of going up in 1-2 MHz intervals like a good overclocker should, I immediately raised the clock speed to 400 MHz. Unsurprisingly, the NX6800GT-T2D256E had no problem running at 400 MHz!?

It passed 410 MHz but anything above 416 MHz and the nVIDIA drivers would complain about hardware failure. I'm not sure what the problem was because the core did not exhibit any signs of instability or artifacting.

With the memory I decided to play nicely and only went up in 10-15 MHz steps. We were pleasantly surprised to be able to crack the 1.1 GHz mark and the memory still had more left in it. In the end, the memory on the MSI NX6800GT-T2D256E maxed out at an impressive 1.16 GHz; definitely a very nice overclock!

PCStats Test System Specs:

processor: amd athlon64 4000+ clock speed: 12 x 200 mhz = 2.4 ghz motherboards: gigabyte ga-k8nxp-sli (nf4-sli) gigabyte ga-k8nsnxp-939 (nf3 ultra) videocard: msi rx800xt-vtd256e powercolor x700 pro gigabyte gv-rx80l256v albatron trinity geforce 6600gt agp msi nx6600gt-td128 albatron trinity pc6600 gigabyte gv-3d1 (single mode) gigabyte gv-3d1 (sli mode) msi nx6600gt-td128e (single mode) msi nx6600gt-td128e (sli mode) msi nx6800gt-t2d256e memory: 2x 512mb mushkin pc3200 l2 v2 hard drive: 74gb wd raptor 10k rpm sata hdd cdrom: aopen 52x combo powersupply: seasonic super tornado 400w software setup windowsxp build 2600 nforce catalyst 4.12 detonator 66.93 benchmarks 3dmark2001se 3dmark05 codecreatures aquamark aquamark3 x2 the threat ut2003 doom3 aa test, af and aa+af test 3dmark2001se ut2003

the agp and pci-e systems use a different motherboard but results are shown for reference.