GeForce 6 Series
Encyclopedia
The GeForce
6 Series (codename NV40) is Nvidia's
sixth generation of GeForce graphic processing units
. Launched on April 14, 2004, the GeForce 6 family introduced PureVideo
post-processing for video, SLI
technology, and Shader Model 3.0 support (compliant with Microsoft
DirectX
9.0c specification and OpenGL
2.0).
(SLI) allows two GeForce 6 cards of the same type to be connected in tandem. The driver software balances the workload to the chips. SLI-capability is limited to select members of the GeForce 6 family; 6500 and above. SLI is only available when using the PCI-Express bus.
In addition, motherboards with some VIA and SIS chipsets and an AMD Athlon XP processor seemingly have compatibility problems with the GeForce 6600 and 6800 GPUs. Problems that have been known to arise are freezing, artifacts, reboots, and other issues that make gaming and use of 3D applications almost impossible. These problems seem to happen only on Direct3D
based applications and do not affect OpenGL.
(*) GeForce FX series has an Array based Vertex Shader.
) 130 nanometer process node as the FX 5950, and it consumed slightly less power.
Early benchmarks put the 6800 series at a disadvantage when compared to similarly priced ATI
cards. Newer drivers have improved performance on both companies' products. Against the ATI's Radeon X800XT PE, its direct competitor, the 6800 Ultra performed comparably in most synthetic and game benchmarks, with each card showing its individual strengths in different gaming applications. Nvidia's part is strong in many applications programmed for OpenGL
(a traditional strength of Nvidia), while ATI leads in many Direct3D applications. Thus, it is now generally accepted that the GeForce 6800 Ultra is similar in performance to the Radeon X800 XT, and that the GeForce 6800 GT generally performs better than the Radeon X800 Pro.
Like all of Nvidia's GPUs up until 2004, initial 6800 members were designed for the AGP
bus. Nvidia added support for the PCI Express
(PCIe) bus in later GeForce 6 products, usually by use of an AGP-PCIe bridge chip. In the case of the 6800 GT and 6800 Ultra, Nvidia developed a variant of the NV40 chip called the NV45. The NV45 shares the same die core as the NV40, but embeds an AGP-PCIe bridge on the chip's package. (Internally, the NV45 is an AGP NV40 with added bus-translation logic, to permit interfacing with a PCIe motherboard. Externally, the NV45 is a single chip with two separate silicon dies clearly visible on the top.) NV48 is NV45 with 512MB RAM.
The use of an AGP-PCIe bridge chip initially led to fears that natively-AGP GPUs would not be able to take advantage of the additional bandwidth offered by PCIe and would therefore be at a disadvantage relative to native PCIe chips. However, benchmarking reveals that even AGP 4x is fast enough that most contemporary games do not improve significantly in performance when switched to AGP 8x, rendering the further bandwidth increase provided by PCIe largely superfluous. Additionally, Nvidia's on-board implementations of AGP are clocked at AGP 12x or 16x, providing bandwidth comparable to PCIe for the rare situations when this bandwidth is actually necessary.
The use of a bridge chip allowed Nvidia to release a full complement of PCIe graphics cards without having to redesign them for the PCIe interface. Later, when Nvidia's GPUs were designed to use PCIe natively, the bidirectional bridge chip allowed them to be used in AGP cards.
ATI, initially a critic of the bridge chip, eventually designed a similar mechanism for their own cards.
Nvidia's professional Quadro line contains members drawn from the 6800 series: Quadro FX 4000 (AGP) and the Quadro FX 3400, 4400 and 4400g (both PCI Express). The 6800 series was also incorporated into laptops with the GeForce Go 6800 and Go 6800 Ultra GPUs.
As of August 2010, NVIDIA
and Adobe
Flash
10.1 does not provide GPU acceleration for GeForce 6 series as a result HD Video playback through Adobe Flash may suffer from digital artifact
s, or extreme video lag on Pentium 4
2.8 GHz or slower systems.
video to decoding of more advanced codecs (MPEG-4
, WMV9), enhanced post-processing (advanced de-interlacing), and limited acceleration for encoding. But perhaps ironically, the first GeForce product(s) to offer PureVideo, the AGP GeForce 6800/GT/Ultra, failed to support all of PureVideo's advertised features.
Media player software (WMP9) with support for WMV-acceleration did not become available until several months after the 6800's introduction. User and web reports showed little if any difference between PureVideo enabled GeForces and non-Purevideo cards. The prolonged public silence of Nvidia, after promising updated drivers, and test benchmarks gathered by users led the user community to conclude that the WMV9 decoder component of the AGP 6800's PureVideo unit is either non-functional or intentionally disabled.
In late 2005, an update to Nvidia's website finally confirmed what had long been suspected by the user community: WMV-acceleration is not available on the AGP 6800. Of course, today's standard computers are fast enough to play WMV9 video and other sophisticated codecs like MPEG-4
, H.264 or Theora
without hardware acceleration.
Their 6600 series currently has three variants: the GeForce 6600LE, the 6600, and the 6600GT (in order from slowest to fastest.) The 6600 GT performs quite a bit better than the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra or Radeon 9800 XT, with the 6600 GT scoring around 8000 in 3DMark03, while the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra scored around 6000, and it is also much cheaper. Notably, the 6600 GT offered identical performance to ATI's high-end X800 PRO graphics card with drivers previous December 2004, when running the popular game Doom 3
(afterwards ATI optimized their drivers and was able to distance itself slightly from the 6600GT). It was also about as fast as the higher-end GeForce 6800 when running games without anti-aliasing in most scenarios.
At introduction, the 6600 family was only available in PCI Express form. AGP models became available roughly a month later, through the use of Nvidia's AGP-PCIe bridge chip. A majority of the AGP GeForce 6600GTs have their memory clocked at 900 MHz, which is 100 MHz below the PCI-E card, on which the memory operates at 1000 MHz. This can contribute to a performance decline when playing certain games. However, many times it is possible to "overclock" the memory to its nominal frequency of 1000 MHz.
Other data for PCI Express based cards:
Other data for AGP based cards:
However, at introduction, production silicon was not yet ready. Nvidia fulfilled 6200 orders by shipping binned/rejected 6600 series cores (NV43V). The rejects were factory modified to disable four-pixel pipelines, thereby converting the native 6600 product into a 6200 product. Some users were able to "unlock" early 6200 boards through a software utility (effectively converting the 6200 back into a 6600 with the complete set of eight pixel pipelines total) if they owned boards with an NV43 A2 or earlier revision of the core. Thus, not all NV43-based 6200 boards could successfully be unlocked (specifically, those with a core revision of A4 or higher), and as soon as NV44 production silicon became available, Nvidia discontinued shipments of downgraded NV43V cores.
/ AGP (NV44/NV44a) is a natively four-pipeline version of the NV43. GeForce 6200 TurboCache cards only have a very small (by modern standards) amount of memory, but make up for this by using system memory accessed through the PCI-Express bus.
originally introduced a unique PCI variant of the GeForce 6200 via its namesake B.F.G. and 3D Fuzion
product lines. Subsequently PNY (GeForce 6200 256 MB PCI), SPARKLE Computer (GeForce 6200 128 MB PCI and GeForce 6200 256 MB PCI), and eVGA (e-GeForce 6200 256 MB PCI) released their own PCI versions of the Geforce 6200 featuring higher memory clocks and resultant memory bandwidth.
Until the release of the ATI X1300 PCI, these were the only PCI DirectX 9 capable cards not based on previous generation GeForce5 FX technology or discontinued XGI Technology
Volari V3XT chipsets.
Excluding SPARKLE
's GeForce 8400 and 8500 series cards, currently the enhanced 256 MB Geforce 6200 PCI variants remain the most powerful PCI based solutions available; making these cards desired by users lacking the option of upgrading to an AGP or PCI Express based discrete video card.
-based motherboard with an integrated NV44 core, as opposed to a standalone graphics card. Nvidia released this product both to follow up its immensely popular GeForce4 MX based nForce and nForce2 boards and to compete with ATI's RS480/482 and Intel's GMA 900/950 in the integrated graphics space. The 6100 series is very competitive, usually tying with or just edging out the ATI products in most benchmarks.
The motherboards use two different types of southbridges - the nForce 410 and the nForce 430. They are fairly similar in features to the nForce4 Ultra motherboards that were on the market before them. Both feature PCI Express and PCI support, eight USB 2.0 ports, integrated sound, two Parallel ATA ports, and Serial ATA
3.0 Gbit/s with Native Command Queuing
(NCQ) – two SATA ports in the case of the 410, four in the 430. The 430 southbridge also supports Gigabit Ethernet with Nvidia's ActiveArmor hardware firewall, while the 410 supports standard 10/100 Ethernet only.
and the Compaq Presario SR-1915 Desktop. The chip is also used by HP in the HP Pavilion Media Center a1547c Desktop PC and by Dell in the C521 Desktop PC.
MCP61 introduced a bug in the SATA NCQ implementation. As a result, Nvidia employees have contributed code to disable NCQ operations under Linux.
Outputs: VGA only
4.0 was considered to be an exclusive feature of the GeForce 7 series of GPUs. However, version 91.47 (and subsequent versions) of the Nvidia ForceWare drivers enable the features of IntelliSample 4.0 on the GeForce 6 GPUs. IntelliSample 4.0 introduces two new antialiasing modes, known as Transparency Supersampling Antialiasing and Transparency Multisampling Antialiasing. These new antialiasing modes enhance the image quality of thin-lined objects such as fences, trees, vegetation and grass in various games.
One possible reason for the enabling of IntelliSample 4.0 for GeForce 6 GPUs might be the fact that the GeForce 7100 GS GPUs are based on NV44 chips, the same as the GeForce 6200 models. Because of this, Nvidia had to backport IntelliSample 4.0 features to the NV4x GPUs, and as a result, the entire GeForce 6 family is able to enjoy the benefits of Transparency Antialiasing.
It was already well known across various communities that Transparency Antialiasing could be used on GeForce 6 GPUs by using some third party tweak tools. As of Nvidia ForceWare drivers 175.16, GeForce 6 IntelliSample 4.0 support has been removed.
GeForce
GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units designed by Nvidia. , there have been eleven iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for use on add-on graphics boards, intended for the high-margin PC gaming market...
6 Series (codename NV40) is Nvidia's
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
sixth generation of GeForce graphic processing units
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
. Launched on April 14, 2004, the GeForce 6 family introduced PureVideo
Nvidia PureVideo
Nvidia PureVideo is a hardware feature designed to offload video decoding processes and video post-processing from a computer's CPU hardware to Nvidia's GPU hardware series GeForce 6 and later, GeForce M series ; and Nvidia Quadro series...
post-processing for video, SLI
Scalable Link Interface
Scalable Link Interface is a brand name for a multi-GPU solution developed by NVIDIA for linking two or more video cards together to produce a single output...
technology, and Shader Model 3.0 support (compliant with Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
9.0c specification and OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
2.0).
GeForce 6 Series features
SLI
The Scalable Link InterfaceScalable Link Interface
Scalable Link Interface is a brand name for a multi-GPU solution developed by NVIDIA for linking two or more video cards together to produce a single output...
(SLI) allows two GeForce 6 cards of the same type to be connected in tandem. The driver software balances the workload to the chips. SLI-capability is limited to select members of the GeForce 6 family; 6500 and above. SLI is only available when using the PCI-Express bus.
Nvidia PureVideo Technology
Nvidia PureVideo technology is the combination of a dedicated video processing core and software which decodes H.264, VC-1, WMV, and MPEG-2 videos with reduced CPU utilization.Shader Model 3.0
While ATI was the first to deliver Shader Model 2.0 capability to the retail market, Nvidia was the first to deliver Shader Model 3.0 (SM3) capability. SM3 extends SM2 in a number of ways: standard FP32 (32-bit floating-point) precision, dynamic branching, increased efficiency and longer shader lengths are the main additions. Shader Model 3.0 was quickly adopted by game developers because it was quite simple to convert existing shaders coded with SM 2.0/2.0A/2.0B to version 3.0, and it offered noticeable performance improvements across the entire GeForce 6 line.Caveats
PureVideo functionality varies by model, with some models lacking WMV9 and/or H.264 acceleration.In addition, motherboards with some VIA and SIS chipsets and an AMD Athlon XP processor seemingly have compatibility problems with the GeForce 6600 and 6800 GPUs. Problems that have been known to arise are freezing, artifacts, reboots, and other issues that make gaming and use of 3D applications almost impossible. These problems seem to happen only on Direct3D
Direct3D
Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...
based applications and do not affect OpenGL.
Geforce 6 Series comparison
Here is how the released versions of the "GeForce 6" series family compare to Nvidia's previous flagship GPU, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, in addition to the comparable units of ATI's newly released for the time Radeon X800 and X850 Series:| GeForce FX 5950 Ultra | GeForce 6200 TC-32 | GeForce 6600 GT | GeForce 6800 Ultra | ATI Radeon X800 XT PE | ATI Radeon X850 XT PE | |
| Transistor count Transistor count The transistor count of a device is the number of transistors in the device.Transistor count is the most common measure of integrated circuit complexity. According to Moore's Law, the transistor count of the integrated circuits doubles every two years... |
135 million | 77 million | 146 million | 222 million | 160 million | 160 million |
| Manufacturing process | 0.13 µm | 0.11 µm | 0.11 µm | 0.13 µm | 0.13 µm low-k | 0.13 µm low-k |
| Die Area (mm²) | ~200 | 110 | 156 | 288 | 288 | 297 |
| Core clock speed (MHz) | 475 | 350 | 500 | 400 | 520 | 540 |
| Number of pixel shader processors | 4 | 4 | 8 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| Number of pixel pipes | 4 | 4 | 8 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| Number of texturing units | 8(16*) | 4 | 8 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| Number of vertex pipelines | 3* | 3 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Peak pixel fill rate (theoretical) | 1.9 Gigapixel/s | 700 Megapixel/s | 2.0 Gigapixel/s | 6.4 Gigapixel/s | 8.32 Gigapixel/s | 8.64 Gigapixel/s |
| Peak texture fill rate (theoretical) | 3.8 Gigatexel/s | 1.4 Gigatexel/s | 4.0 Gigatexel/s | 6.4 Gigatexel/s | 8.32 Gigatexel/s | 8.64 Gigatexel/s |
| Memory interface | 256-bit | 64-bit | 128-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory clock speed | 950 MHz DDR DDR SDRAM Double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules... |
700 MHz DDR2 DDR SDRAM Double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules... |
1.0 GHz GDDR3 GDDR3 Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology, designed by ATI Technologies with the collaboration of JEDEC.It has much the same technological base as DDR2, but the power and heat dispersal requirements have been reduced somewhat, allowing for higher performance memory... |
1.1 GHz GDDR3 GDDR3 Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology, designed by ATI Technologies with the collaboration of JEDEC.It has much the same technological base as DDR2, but the power and heat dispersal requirements have been reduced somewhat, allowing for higher performance memory... |
1.12 GHz GDDR3 GDDR3 Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology, designed by ATI Technologies with the collaboration of JEDEC.It has much the same technological base as DDR2, but the power and heat dispersal requirements have been reduced somewhat, allowing for higher performance memory... |
1.18 GHz GDDR3 GDDR3 Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology, designed by ATI Technologies with the collaboration of JEDEC.It has much the same technological base as DDR2, but the power and heat dispersal requirements have been reduced somewhat, allowing for higher performance memory... |
| Peak memory bandwidth (GB/s) | 30.4 | 5.6 | 16.0 | 35.2 | 35.84 | 37.76 |
(*) GeForce FX series has an Array based Vertex Shader.
GeForce 6800 Series
The first family in the GeForce 6 product-line, the 6800 series catered to the high-performance gaming market. As the very first GeForce 6 model, the 16 pixel pipeline GeForce 6800 Ultra (NV40) was 2 to 2.5 times faster than Nvidia's previous top-line product (the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra), packed four times the number of pixel pipelines, twice the number of texture units and added a much improved pixel-shader architecture. Yet, the 6800 Ultra was fabricated on the same (IBMIBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
) 130 nanometer process node as the FX 5950, and it consumed slightly less power.
Early benchmarks put the 6800 series at a disadvantage when compared to similarly priced ATI
ATI Technologies
ATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Inc., the company was listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by Advanced Micro...
cards. Newer drivers have improved performance on both companies' products. Against the ATI's Radeon X800XT PE, its direct competitor, the 6800 Ultra performed comparably in most synthetic and game benchmarks, with each card showing its individual strengths in different gaming applications. Nvidia's part is strong in many applications programmed for OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
(a traditional strength of Nvidia), while ATI leads in many Direct3D applications. Thus, it is now generally accepted that the GeForce 6800 Ultra is similar in performance to the Radeon X800 XT, and that the GeForce 6800 GT generally performs better than the Radeon X800 Pro.
Like all of Nvidia's GPUs up until 2004, initial 6800 members were designed for the AGP
Accelerated Graphics Port
The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express...
bus. Nvidia added support for the PCI Express
PCI Express
PCI Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards...
(PCIe) bus in later GeForce 6 products, usually by use of an AGP-PCIe bridge chip. In the case of the 6800 GT and 6800 Ultra, Nvidia developed a variant of the NV40 chip called the NV45. The NV45 shares the same die core as the NV40, but embeds an AGP-PCIe bridge on the chip's package. (Internally, the NV45 is an AGP NV40 with added bus-translation logic, to permit interfacing with a PCIe motherboard. Externally, the NV45 is a single chip with two separate silicon dies clearly visible on the top.) NV48 is NV45 with 512MB RAM.
The use of an AGP-PCIe bridge chip initially led to fears that natively-AGP GPUs would not be able to take advantage of the additional bandwidth offered by PCIe and would therefore be at a disadvantage relative to native PCIe chips. However, benchmarking reveals that even AGP 4x is fast enough that most contemporary games do not improve significantly in performance when switched to AGP 8x, rendering the further bandwidth increase provided by PCIe largely superfluous. Additionally, Nvidia's on-board implementations of AGP are clocked at AGP 12x or 16x, providing bandwidth comparable to PCIe for the rare situations when this bandwidth is actually necessary.
The use of a bridge chip allowed Nvidia to release a full complement of PCIe graphics cards without having to redesign them for the PCIe interface. Later, when Nvidia's GPUs were designed to use PCIe natively, the bidirectional bridge chip allowed them to be used in AGP cards.
ATI, initially a critic of the bridge chip, eventually designed a similar mechanism for their own cards.
Nvidia's professional Quadro line contains members drawn from the 6800 series: Quadro FX 4000 (AGP) and the Quadro FX 3400, 4400 and 4400g (both PCI Express). The 6800 series was also incorporated into laptops with the GeForce Go 6800 and Go 6800 Ultra GPUs.
As of August 2010, NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
and Adobe
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
10.1 does not provide GPU acceleration for GeForce 6 series as a result HD Video playback through Adobe Flash may suffer from digital artifact
Digital artifact
A digital artifact is any undesired alteration in data introduced in a digital process by an involved technique and/or technology.-Possible causes:...
s, or extreme video lag on Pentium 4
Pentium 4
Pentium 4 was a line of single-core desktop and laptop central processing units , introduced by Intel on November 20, 2000 and shipped through August 8, 2008. They had a 7th-generation x86 microarchitecture, called NetBurst, which was the company's first all-new design since the introduction of the...
2.8 GHz or slower systems.
PureVideo and the AGP GeForce 6800
PureVideo expanded the level of multimedia-video support from decoding of MPEG-2MPEG-2
MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...
video to decoding of more advanced codecs (MPEG-4
MPEG-4
MPEG-4 is a method of defining compression of audio and visual digital data. It was introduced in late 1998 and designated a standard for a group of audio and video coding formats and related technology agreed upon by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group under the formal standard ISO/IEC...
, WMV9), enhanced post-processing (advanced de-interlacing), and limited acceleration for encoding. But perhaps ironically, the first GeForce product(s) to offer PureVideo, the AGP GeForce 6800/GT/Ultra, failed to support all of PureVideo's advertised features.
Media player software (WMP9) with support for WMV-acceleration did not become available until several months after the 6800's introduction. User and web reports showed little if any difference between PureVideo enabled GeForces and non-Purevideo cards. The prolonged public silence of Nvidia, after promising updated drivers, and test benchmarks gathered by users led the user community to conclude that the WMV9 decoder component of the AGP 6800's PureVideo unit is either non-functional or intentionally disabled.
In late 2005, an update to Nvidia's website finally confirmed what had long been suspected by the user community: WMV-acceleration is not available on the AGP 6800. Of course, today's standard computers are fast enough to play WMV9 video and other sophisticated codecs like MPEG-4
MPEG-4
MPEG-4 is a method of defining compression of audio and visual digital data. It was introduced in late 1998 and designated a standard for a group of audio and video coding formats and related technology agreed upon by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group under the formal standard ISO/IEC...
, H.264 or Theora
Theora
Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container....
without hardware acceleration.
GeForce 6 series general features
- 4, 8, 12, or 16 pixel-pipeline GPU architecture
- Up to 8x more shading performance compared to the previous generation
- CineFX 3.0 engine - DirectX 9 Shader Model 3.0 support
- On Chip Video processor (PureVideo)
- Full MPEG-2 encoding and decoding at GPU level (PureVideo)
- Advanced Adaptive De-Interlacing (PureVideo)
- DDRDDR SDRAMDouble data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules...
and GDDR-3 memory on a 256-bit wide Memory interface - UltraShadow II technology - 3x to 4x faster than NV35 (GeForce FX 5900)
- High Precision Dynamic Range (HPDR) technology
- 128-bit studio precision through the entire pipeline - Floating-point 32-bit color precision
- IntelliSample 4.0 Technology - 16x Anisotropic Filtering, Rotating Grid Antialiasing and Transparency Antialiasing (see here)
- Max Resolution is 2048x1536@85 Hz
- Video Scaling and Filtering - HQ filtering techniques up to HDTV resolutions
- Integrated TV Encoder - TV-output up to 1024x768 resolutions
- OpenGL 2.0 Optimizations and support
- DVC 3.0 (Digital Vibrance Control)
- Dual 400 MHz RAMDACs which support QXGA displays up to 2048x1536 @ 85 Hz
- Dual DVI on select members (Depending on the Card Manufacturer.)
6800 chipset table
| Board Name | Core Type | Core (MHz) |
Memory (MHz) |
Pipeline Config |
Vertex Processors |
Memory Interface |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6800 Ultra | NV40/NV45/NV48 | 400 | 1100 | 16 | 6 | 256-bit |
| 6800 GT | NV40/NV45/NV48 | 350 | 1000 | 16 | 6 | 256-bit |
| 6800 GS | NV40/NV42 | 350/425 | 1000 | 12 | 5 | 256-bit |
| 6800 GTO | NV40/NV45 | 350 | 900 | 12 | 5 | 256-bit |
| 6800 | NV40/NV41 NV42 |
325 | 700/600 | 12 | 5 | 256-bit |
| 6800 Go | NV41M | 300 | 600 | 12 | 5 | 256-bit |
| 6800 Go Ultra | NV41M(0.13u)/NV42M(0.11u) | 450 | 1100 | 12 | 5 | 256-bit |
| 6800 XT | NV40/NV41/NV42 | 325/350/? | 700/1000+ | 8 | 4 | 128/256-bit |
| 6800 XE | NV40 | 275/300/325 | 533/700 | 8 | 3 | 128-bit |
| 6800 LE | NV40 | 300 | 700 | 8 | 4 | 256-bit |
GeForce 6600 Series
The GeForce 6600 (NV43) was officially launched on August 12, 2004, several months after the launch of the 6800 Ultra. With half the pixel pipelines and vertex shaders of the 6800 GT, and a smaller 128-bit memory bus, the lower-performance and lower-cost 6600 is the mainstream product of the GeForce 6 series. The 6600 series retains the core rendering features of the 6800 series, including SLI. Equipped with fewer rendering units, the 6600 series processes pixel data at a slower rate than the more powerful 6800 series. However, the reduction in hardware resources, and migration to TSMC's 110 nm manufacturing process (versus the 6800's 130 nm process), make the 6600 both less expensive for Nvidia to manufacture and less expensive for customers to purchase.Their 6600 series currently has three variants: the GeForce 6600LE, the 6600, and the 6600GT (in order from slowest to fastest.) The 6600 GT performs quite a bit better than the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra or Radeon 9800 XT, with the 6600 GT scoring around 8000 in 3DMark03, while the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra scored around 6000, and it is also much cheaper. Notably, the 6600 GT offered identical performance to ATI's high-end X800 PRO graphics card with drivers previous December 2004, when running the popular game Doom 3
Doom 3
Doom 3 is a science fiction horror video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. An example of the first-person shooter genre, Doom 3 was first released for Microsoft Windows on August 3, 2004. The game was later adapted for Linux, as well as being ported by Aspyr Media for Mac...
(afterwards ATI optimized their drivers and was able to distance itself slightly from the 6600GT). It was also about as fast as the higher-end GeForce 6800 when running games without anti-aliasing in most scenarios.
At introduction, the 6600 family was only available in PCI Express form. AGP models became available roughly a month later, through the use of Nvidia's AGP-PCIe bridge chip. A majority of the AGP GeForce 6600GTs have their memory clocked at 900 MHz, which is 100 MHz below the PCI-E card, on which the memory operates at 1000 MHz. This can contribute to a performance decline when playing certain games. However, many times it is possible to "overclock" the memory to its nominal frequency of 1000 MHz.
6600 chipset table
| Board Name | Core Type | Core (MHz) |
Memory (MHz) |
Pipeline Config |
Vertex Processors |
Memory Interface |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6700 XL | NV43 | 525 | 1100 | 8 | 3 | 128-bit |
| 6600 GT GDDR3 | NV43 | 500 | 900/1000 | 8 | 3 | 128-bit |
| 6600 XL | NV43 | 400 | 800 | 8 | 3 | 128-bit |
| 6600 DDR2 | NV43 | 350 | 800 | 8 | 3 | 128-bit |
| 6600 | NV43 | 300 | 500/550 | 8 | 3 | 128-bit |
| 6600 LE | NV43 | 300 | 500 | 4 | 3 | 128-bit |
- Memory Interface: 128-bit
- Memory Bandwidth: 16.0 GB/s.
- Fill Rate (pixels/s.): 4.0 billion
- Vertices per Second: 375 million
- Memory Data Rate: 1000 MHz
- Pixels per Clock (peak): 8
- RAMDACs: 400 MHz
Other data for AGP based cards:
- Memory Interface: 128-bit
- Memory Bandwidth: 14.4 GB/s.
- Fill Rate (pixels/s.): 4.0 billion
- Vertices per Second: 375 million
- Memory Data Rate: 900 MHz
- Pixels per Clock (peak): 8
- RAMDACs 400 MHz
GeForce 6500
The GeForce 6500 was released in October 2005 and is based on the same NV44 core as the value/budget (low-end or entry level) GeForce 6200TC, but with a higher GPU clock speed and more memory. The GeForce 6500 also supports SLI.GeForce 6500
- Core Clock: 450 MHz
- Memory Clock: 700 MHz
- Pixel Pipelines: 4
- Number of ROPs: 2
- Vertex Processors: 3
- Memory: 128 MB/256 MB DDRDDR SDRAMDouble data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules...
on a 64-bit interface - Fill Rate (pixels/s): 1.6 billion
- Vertices per Second: 300 million
- Effective Memory Bandwidth(GB/s): 13.44
GeForce 6200
With just 4 pixel pipelines, the 6200 series forms Nvidia's value/budget (low-end or entry level) product. The 6200 omits memory compression and SLI support, but otherwise offers similar rendering features as the 6600s. The later 6200 boards were based on the NV44 core (s), which is the final production silicon for the 6200 series.However, at introduction, production silicon was not yet ready. Nvidia fulfilled 6200 orders by shipping binned/rejected 6600 series cores (NV43V). The rejects were factory modified to disable four-pixel pipelines, thereby converting the native 6600 product into a 6200 product. Some users were able to "unlock" early 6200 boards through a software utility (effectively converting the 6200 back into a 6600 with the complete set of eight pixel pipelines total) if they owned boards with an NV43 A2 or earlier revision of the core. Thus, not all NV43-based 6200 boards could successfully be unlocked (specifically, those with a core revision of A4 or higher), and as soon as NV44 production silicon became available, Nvidia discontinued shipments of downgraded NV43V cores.
GeForce 6200
- Core Clock: 300 MHz
- Memory Clock: 550 MHz
- Pixel Pipelines: 4
- Vertex Processors: 3
- Memory: 128 MB/256 MB/512 MB DDRDDR SDRAMDouble data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules...
on a 64-bit/128-bit interface
GeForce 6200 TurboCache / AGP
The GeForce 6200 TurboCacheTurboCache
NVIDIA's TurboCache technology is a method of allowing video cards more available framebuffer memory by using both onboard video memory and main system memory. Main memory is accessed using the high-bandwidth PCI-Express bus....
/ AGP (NV44/NV44a) is a natively four-pipeline version of the NV43. GeForce 6200 TurboCache cards only have a very small (by modern standards) amount of memory, but make up for this by using system memory accessed through the PCI-Express bus.
GeForce 6200 PCI-Express (NV44) TurboCache
- Core Clock: 350 MHz
- Memory Clock: 700 MHz
- Pixel Pipelines: 4
- Number of ROPs: 2
- Vertex Processors: 3
- Memory: 16 MB/32 Mb/64 Mb/128 Mb DDRDDR SDRAMDouble data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules...
on a 32-bit/64-bit/128-bit interface
- GeForce 6200 w/ TurboCache supporting 128 MiB, including 16 Mb of local TurboCache (32-bit)
- GeForce 6200 w/ TurboCache supporting 128 MiB, including 32 Mb of local TurboCache (64-bit)
- GeForce 6200 w/ TurboCache supporting 256 MiB, including 64 Mb of local TurboCache (64-bit)
- GeForce 6200 w/ TurboCache supporting 256 MiB, including 128 Mb of local TurboCache (128-bit)
GeForce 6200 AGP (NV44a) without TurboCache
- Core Clock: 350 MHz
- Memory Clock: 500 MHz
- Pixel Pipelines: 4
- Number of ROPs: 2
- Vertex Processors: 3
- Memory: 128-256-512 MB DDR or DDR2 on a 64-bit interface
GeForce 6200 AGP (NV44a2) without TurboCache
- Core Clock: 350 MHz
- Memory Clock: 540 MHz
- Pixel Pipelines: 4
- Number of ROPs: 2
- Vertex Processors: 3
- Memory: 128 - 256 MB DDR2 with a 128-bit interface
- Cooling: Passive heatsink
GeForce 6200 PCI (NV44) without TurboCache
BFG TechnologiesBFG Technologies
BFG Technologies was a privately held U.S.-based supplier of power supplies and 3D video cards based on NVIDIA graphics technology and a manufacturer of high-end gaming/home theater computer systems. BFG Technologies branded products were available in North America and Europe at retailers and...
originally introduced a unique PCI variant of the GeForce 6200 via its namesake B.F.G. and 3D Fuzion
3D Fuzion
3D Fuzion is a downmarket subsidiary of BFG Technologies. Like BFG, they are one of many NVIDIA OEM partners. They sell entry, midrange and high-end video cards utilizing NVIDIA chipsets, just like BFG Technologies...
product lines. Subsequently PNY (GeForce 6200 256 MB PCI), SPARKLE Computer (GeForce 6200 128 MB PCI and GeForce 6200 256 MB PCI), and eVGA (e-GeForce 6200 256 MB PCI) released their own PCI versions of the Geforce 6200 featuring higher memory clocks and resultant memory bandwidth.
Until the release of the ATI X1300 PCI, these were the only PCI DirectX 9 capable cards not based on previous generation GeForce5 FX technology or discontinued XGI Technology
XGI Technology
XGI Technology Inc. is based upon the old graphics division of SiS spun off as a separate company, and the graphics assets of Trident Microsystems.-History:...
Volari V3XT chipsets.
Excluding SPARKLE
Sparkle
Sparkle may refer to:* Spark * Sparkle * Sparkle , a lemon-flavored soft drink* Sparkle, California, in Contra Costa County* Sparkle, a brand of paper towels owned by Georgia-Pacific...
's GeForce 8400 and 8500 series cards, currently the enhanced 256 MB Geforce 6200 PCI variants remain the most powerful PCI based solutions available; making these cards desired by users lacking the option of upgrading to an AGP or PCI Express based discrete video card.
- Core Clock: 350 MHz
- Memory Clock: 400 MHz (BFG Technologies 6200 oc 410 MHz, PNY and EVGA 533 MHz)
- Pixel Pipelines: 4
- Memory: 256 (BFG Technologies 6200 OC PCI and EVGA e-Ge-Force 6200 PCI) / 128 (BFG Technologies 3DFuzion GeForce 6200 PCI) MB DDRDDR SDRAMDouble data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules...
on a 64-bit interface
GeForce 6100 and 6150 series
In late 2005 Nvidia introduced a new member to the GeForce family, the 6100 series, also known as C51. The term GeForce 6100/6150 actually refers to an nForce4NForce4
The nForce4 is a motherboard chipset released by Nvidia in October, 2004. The chipset supports AMD 64-bit processors and Intel Pentium 4 LGA 775 processors.-nForce4/nForce4-4x:...
-based motherboard with an integrated NV44 core, as opposed to a standalone graphics card. Nvidia released this product both to follow up its immensely popular GeForce4 MX based nForce and nForce2 boards and to compete with ATI's RS480/482 and Intel's GMA 900/950 in the integrated graphics space. The 6100 series is very competitive, usually tying with or just edging out the ATI products in most benchmarks.
The motherboards use two different types of southbridges - the nForce 410 and the nForce 430. They are fairly similar in features to the nForce4 Ultra motherboards that were on the market before them. Both feature PCI Express and PCI support, eight USB 2.0 ports, integrated sound, two Parallel ATA ports, and Serial ATA
Serial ATA
Serial ATA is a computer bus interface for connecting host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives...
3.0 Gbit/s with Native Command Queuing
Native Command Queuing
Native Command Queuing is a technology designed to increase performance of SATA hard disks under certain conditions by allowing the individual hard disk to internally optimize the order in which received read and write commands are executed...
(NCQ) – two SATA ports in the case of the 410, four in the 430. The 430 southbridge also supports Gigabit Ethernet with Nvidia's ActiveArmor hardware firewall, while the 410 supports standard 10/100 Ethernet only.
GeForce 6100 and 6150 series chip specifications
Both the 6100 and 6150 support Shader Model 3.0 and DirectX 9.0c. The 6150 also features support for High-Definition video playback, PureVideo Processing, DVI, and video-out while the 6100 supports PureVideo Processing only. Maximum supported resolution is 1920 x 1440 pixels (@75 Hz) for RGB display and 1600 x 1200 pixels (@65 Hz) for DVI-D displayGeForce 61XX abnormally high failure rate in notebook computers
In 2008, Nvidia took a $150 to 250M charge against revenue because the GPUs were failing at "higher than normal rates." HP provided an extension to their warranty of up to 24 months for notebooks affected by this issue. A class action suit was filed against HP and Nvidia by Whatley Drake & Kallas LLC.GeForce 6100
- Manufacturing process: 90 nm
- Core Clock: 425 MHz
- Vertex Processors: 1
- Pixel Pipelines: 2
- Shader Model: 3
- DirectX support: v9.0c
- Video playback acceleration: SD video acceleration (HDHigh-definition videoHigh-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...
video acceleration not supported) - Outputs: VGA only
- Memory: Shared DDR/DDR2 (socket 939/AM2) system memory (selectable through BIOS - usually 32/64/128/256 MB)
GeForce 6150
- Manufacturing process: 90 nm
- Core clock: 475 MHz
- Vertex processors: 1
- Pixel pipelines: 2
- Shader model: 3
- DirectX support: v9.0c
- Video playback acceleration: HD video acceleration
- Outputs: VGA, DVI, RCA (Video)
- Memory: Shared DDR2 (socket 939/AM2) system memory (selectable through BIOS - usually 32/64/128/256 MB)
- HT Bus (Bandwidth) = 2000 MT/s max
GeForce 6150LE
GeForce 6150LE is used by Fujitsu Siemens in the Esprismo green desktopand the Compaq Presario SR-1915 Desktop. The chip is also used by HP in the HP Pavilion Media Center a1547c Desktop PC and by Dell in the C521 Desktop PC.
GeForce 6150SE
GeForce 6150SE (MCP61, also known as C61) is an updated, single-chip version of the Nvidia GeForce 6100. The MCP61 uses less power than the original C51 2-chip version of 6100. Its onboard video outperforms the 6150 in many 3D benchmarks despite its lower core frequency (425 MHz), because of added hardware Z-culling.MCP61 introduced a bug in the SATA NCQ implementation. As a result, Nvidia employees have contributed code to disable NCQ operations under Linux.
- Manufacturing process: 90 nm
- Core Clock: 425 MHz
- HT Bus = 2000 max
- Vertex Processors: 1
- Pixel Pipelines: 2
- Shader Model: 3
- DirectX support: v9
Outputs: VGA only
IntelliSample 4.0 and the GeForce 6 GPUs
Upon launch of the GeForce 7 family of graphics processing units, IntelliSampleIntellisample
Intellisample is the brand name for NVIDIA's antialiasing method in GeForce graphics cards.-Intellisample 4.0:Version 4.0 is used in the GeForce 6 and GeForce 7 series, and includes two new methods, Transparency Supersampling and the faster but lower-quality Transparency Multisampling...
4.0 was considered to be an exclusive feature of the GeForce 7 series of GPUs. However, version 91.47 (and subsequent versions) of the Nvidia ForceWare drivers enable the features of IntelliSample 4.0 on the GeForce 6 GPUs. IntelliSample 4.0 introduces two new antialiasing modes, known as Transparency Supersampling Antialiasing and Transparency Multisampling Antialiasing. These new antialiasing modes enhance the image quality of thin-lined objects such as fences, trees, vegetation and grass in various games.
One possible reason for the enabling of IntelliSample 4.0 for GeForce 6 GPUs might be the fact that the GeForce 7100 GS GPUs are based on NV44 chips, the same as the GeForce 6200 models. Because of this, Nvidia had to backport IntelliSample 4.0 features to the NV4x GPUs, and as a result, the entire GeForce 6 family is able to enjoy the benefits of Transparency Antialiasing.
It was already well known across various communities that Transparency Antialiasing could be used on GeForce 6 GPUs by using some third party tweak tools. As of Nvidia ForceWare drivers 175.16, GeForce 6 IntelliSample 4.0 support has been removed.
See also
- Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing unitsComparison of NVIDIA Graphics Processing UnitsThis page contains general information about Nvidia's GPUs and videocards based on official Nvidia specifications.-Direct X version note:Direct X version indicates which graphics acceleration operations the card supports.* DirectX 6.0 - Multitexturing...
- Graphics hardware and FOSS
- GeForce FX Series
- GeForce 7 SeriesGeForce 7 SeriesThe GeForce 7 Series is the seventh generation of Nvidia's GeForce graphics processing units.-Features:The following features are common to all models in the GeForce 7 series except the GeForce 7100, which lacks GCAA:-GeForce 7100 Series:...
- Scalable Link InterfaceScalable Link InterfaceScalable Link Interface is a brand name for a multi-GPU solution developed by NVIDIA for linking two or more video cards together to produce a single output...
External links
- Nvidia: GeForce 6 Series Product Overview
- Nvidia PureVideo Technology page
- Inside nVidia NV40
- Transparency Antialiasing on GeForce 6 GPUs
- Nvidia: Integrated GPU Technical Specifications
Reviews
- nvNews/ a nvnews review of the GeForce 6800
- Beyond 3D/ preview of nv45 core architecture
- Guru3D Nvidia GeForce 6 Series and ATi X Series/comparison - 6-series v. Radeon X-series
- X-bit Labs Second Generation of Integrated Graphics from Nvidia: GeForce 6150 and GeForce 6100/ Page on GeForce 6100, 6150
- GeForce 6600GT review/ review- GeForce 6600GT
- nVidia Performance webpage for GeForce FX 5700 and higher models with detailed specifications of GeForce FX 5950 Ultra/Nvidia page on GeForce FX-series.