We?ve just published our most recent article which raises some questions on the quality produced by Nvidia's Geforce 6800 Ultra.
Before we begin it should be stated that these tests were performed using the Forceware 60.72 drivers, the version provided by Nvidia to all press reviewing their new card. These drivers are still beta however they have an interesting approval. The following text is taken from the Futuremark website:
Update April 14th, 2004: Futuremark has reviewed the ForceWare 60.72 drivers for the launch of the GeForce 6800 Series graphics cards at NVIDIA's specific request. We found that the 60.72 drivers used with the GeForce 6800 Series fulfill the optimization guidelines for 3DMark03 Build 340. Please note that the ForceWare 60.72 drivers are approved only for the GeForce 6800 Series graphics cards, and any future approved WHQL drivers will replace the 60.72 non-WHQL drivers.
To us this statement means that these drivers are free from optimisations and therefore the results obtained when using these drivers can be fairly compared to all other results on cards using approved drivers. Considering our test system scored 11800 at default driver settings/3dmark03 settings this seems a stunning achievement, unfortunately our tests do not back up the statement produced by Futuremark.
Driverheaven Investigation - 6800 Ultra IQ issues
Before we begin it should be stated that these tests were performed using the Forceware 60.72 drivers, the version provided by Nvidia to all press reviewing their new card. These drivers are still beta however they have an interesting approval. The following text is taken from the Futuremark website:
Update April 14th, 2004: Futuremark has reviewed the ForceWare 60.72 drivers for the launch of the GeForce 6800 Series graphics cards at NVIDIA's specific request. We found that the 60.72 drivers used with the GeForce 6800 Series fulfill the optimization guidelines for 3DMark03 Build 340. Please note that the ForceWare 60.72 drivers are approved only for the GeForce 6800 Series graphics cards, and any future approved WHQL drivers will replace the 60.72 non-WHQL drivers.
To us this statement means that these drivers are free from optimisations and therefore the results obtained when using these drivers can be fairly compared to all other results on cards using approved drivers. Considering our test system scored 11800 at default driver settings/3dmark03 settings this seems a stunning achievement, unfortunately our tests do not back up the statement produced by Futuremark.
Driverheaven Investigation - 6800 Ultra IQ issues
