NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL

[G5guy]

I also compared my 9600 pro and 6800 ultra. Attached below is a graph of the raw geometry with textures capability. I am trying to get the author of OpenMark to update his benchmark with modern opengl options. I think it would be a great tool for comparison and 3D programmers.

Anyone else want to add results?

 

[G5guy]

Here is a look at the area we are interested most in games....forget the dips - they are just a problem with the program.

 

[G5guy]

dmglover,

Thanks for the pics. The Mac version is a monster - but the DDL is nice!

I am now REALLY interested in your PC 6800 performance results. I ran my PC with a Quadro FX1100 and GF4600 Titanium and they spanked the Mac 6800 at high triangle count. See the chart below. There is surely something wrong with the Mac OpenGL drivers and/or the hardware. I hope it's the drivers!

 

[dmglover]

Mine is:

GeForce 6800 Ultra:

Type: display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: nVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0040
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 2119

 

[G5guy]

My ROM Revision: 2119 also.

 

[RGunner]

Rom

is 2119 here

 

[Cooknn]

Sure would be nice if they'd write some drivers.

Guess I'll have to wait for tiger.

well @#%@%#%#%#^$&%&$&#&^# Damn

I saw some beta drivers for the 6800 on a Mac Torrent site last night...

 

[mactarkus]

ROM Revision

My 6800 Ultra also shows a 2119 Rom Revision:

GeForce 6800 Ultra:

Type: display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: nVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0040
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 2119

I hope that the beta sighting indicates new drivers real soon.

 

[UnixMac]

Just be careful with those darn screws...I had extra ones laying around but it seems as if they designed them to be screwed in by a right hander and Im a left hander so I had to carefully go at angle...probably why I dropped the first two! OK...hope that helps at least one person out there! 😀

Amen brother.. I spent 1/2 hour slowly (very carefully) moving my mack around on the couch to get them out.. I figured they could cause a short if I left them in there... Apple made it a bare to install PCI card screws!

As for the card... just look at my story & warning that I posted here about the software disks that came with you Mac. (if Apple doesn't delete it).. I tried to spread the word on a few forums as I think it's very important.

http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@196.qwRoabKzzQK.110025@.689d89d2

 

[zwida]

Amen brother.. I spent 1/2 hour slowly (very carefully) moving my mack around on the couch to get them out.. I figured they could cause a short if I left them in there... Apple made it a bare to install PCI card screws!

This too closely mirrors the 15 embarrassing minutes I spent trying to remove a lost screw.

Cripes.

I wound up doing the installation with the machine turned upside down. Seemed like there were fewer places for a screw to hide at that end of the box.

 

[wdlove]

This too closely mirrors the 15 embarrassing minutes I spent trying to remove a lost screw.

Cripes.

I wound up doing the installation with the machine turned upside down. Seemed like there were fewer places for a screw to hide at that end of the box.

I would have liked to have seen pictures of this episode. It would be funny, but I'm sure that at the moment frustration ruled. This sounds like a job for the experienced. If and when I get mine, will have Apple do the installation. I'm all thumbs. 😀

 

[dmglover]

6800 Ultra Performance Comparison

The G5guy created this chart based on my running the 6800 Ultra DLL on my G5 and 6800 Ultra on my PC.

Config is as follows;

Intel Pentium 4 3.4Ghz
ASUS P4C800 E Deluxe
1 Gig DDR Memory
nVidia 6800 Ultra

Apple G5 Dual 2.0Ghz
4 Gig DDR Memory
nVidia 6800 Ultra DDL

 

[UnixMac]

The G5guy created this chart based on my running the 6800 Ultra DLL on my G5 and 6800 Ultra on my PC.

Config is as follows;

Intel Pentium 4 3.4Ghz
ASUS P4C800 E Deluxe
1 Gig DDR Memory
nVidia 6800 Ultra

Apple G5 Dual 2.0Ghz
4 Gig DDR Memory
nVidia 6800 Ultra DDL

if this is true, it's quite sad... what is the test based on? and does it take advantage of the dual processors (MP) or Ativec or anything? Pretty big difference if you ask me.

 

[G5guy]

The test is based on a textured, lit cube in OpenGL which uses a 'display list' to duplicate the cube to increase the triangle count on screen. The CPU calculates the cube rotation and then is repainted. It does not use anything other than the opengl drivers and Mach kernel really (95%) and is not multithreaded. It is basic raw graphics capability doing what is basically done in games and 3D software (without the very latest vertex extensions), which most legacy code does not use (yet). There seems to be something in the drivers since the G5 does have a good modern memory architecture and CPU.

From what I have read so far online this has been a problem for some time and anyone interested in professional 3D apps (Maya, Cinema4D, Lightwave, etc.) should hound Apple to fix this. This is also a deterrent for other professional CAD apps (ProE, AutoCAD) to port their software.

Games with low triangle counts are not as affected. Doom 3 is affected!

 

[daveL]

The test is based on a textured, lit cube in OpenGL which uses a 'display list' to duplicate the cube to increase the triangle count on screen. The CPU calculates the cube rotation and then is repainted. It does not use anything other than the opengl drivers and Mach kernel really (95%) and is not multithreaded. It is basic raw graphics capability doing what is basically done in games and 3D software (without the very latest vertex extensions), which most legacy code does not use (yet). There seems to be something in the drivers since the G5 does have a good modern memory architecture and CPU.

From what I have read so far online this has been a problem for some time and anyone interested in professional 3D apps (Maya, Cinema4D, Lightwave, etc.) should hound Apple to fix this. This is also a deterrent for other professional CAD apps (ProE, AutoCAD) to port their software.

Games with low triangle counts are not as affected. Doom 3 is affected!

Would this be a better OpenGL benchmark?

http://www.bresink.de/osx/viewperf.html

 

[G5guy]

I ran that benchmark - my 6800 ultra barely had any increase over my 9600 pro! In one case none at all. This test is in fact what made me interested in this issue. I have the 8.01 version but Marcel thinks we should wait until 10.3.6 comes out to advertise the results. I will post my results on that test as well later - it is the 'official' opengl bench but it takes much longer to install and run than OpenMark.

 

[daveL]

I ran that benchmark - my 6800 ultra barely had any increase over my 9600 pro! In one case none at all. This test is in fact what made me interested in this issue. I have the 8.01 version but Marcel thinks we should wait until 10.3.6 comes out to advertise the results. I will post my results on that test as well later - it is the 'official' opengl bench but it takes much longer to install and run than OpenMark.

As far as 10.3.6 goes, they seeded 7R27 today on ADC. I can't be sure, but I think this build may be 10.3.6 GM. I'm running it now without problems. I wouldn't be surprised if this build shows up in Software Update early next week. In addition to updated nVidia and ATI drivers, the build notes talk about OpenGL performance, but you probably already know that.

 

[recursivejon]

Rom

GeForce 6800 Ultra:

Type: display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: nVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0040
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 2119

 

[Corrupted]

Got my 6800 Today

The Apple Store at Willow Bend Mall here in Texas called me up about 4 hours ago and told me they had 4 6800's come in. Well I put it in my G5 did the firmware update that was on the cd since I have a REV A 2.0 G5 and test UT2004. All setting MAXED at 1680 X 1050 on my 20" Apple ALUM Display. The game looks beautiful; Textures are eye popping to say the least. Big difference when running these setting on the ATI 9600 PRO 64MB. I was a little disappointed in the FPS though. I was getting between 34 to 48 FPS on average. Spikes as high as 70 FPS and Dips as low as 27 FPS. Overall it runs smooth as silk though. I though I would be getting around 90 FPS.

The Card itself is HUGE. ALOT LONGER than I thought. The card is a little loud but I expected that. Hopefully the will put a better fan control firmware update for the fan so it will turn slower when you are not stressing the card.

Overall pretty happy it’s a lot better than what I had. I just thought the performance would be a little better because the PC 6800's are getting better FPS on UT 2004. Take care.

 

[UnixMac]

The Card itself is HUGE. ALOT LONGER than I thought. The card is a little load but I expected that. Hopefully the will put a better fan control firmware update for the fan so it will turn slower when you are not stressing the card.

Overall pretty happy it’s a lot better than what I had. I just thought the performance would be a little better because the PC 6800's are getting better FPS on UT 2004. Take care.

I agree with both... card is certainly huge... lot's of capacitors... never seen so many on once card.

Performane is yet to be unlocked IMHO with Tiger and newer OpenGL Drivers. Doom 3 should move along quite qell if it's MP aware. Can't wait to see it

 

[flytrap]

Demos

Is there any good demos for this card. I had the 9600 first and went to ATI web Page and got several demos but the Nvidia only has PC Demos.

Thanks
flytrap

 

[haunebu]

Specs

GeForce 6800 Ultra:

Type: display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: nVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0040
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 2119

 

[G5guy]

OpenGL on various platforms

I just compiled some results from various forums and plotted below. I ran OpenMark in 10.3.6 on the G5 and no change in performance was seen. However, I ran SPECViewPerf and UG was finally able to run. Here are the results:

Run All Summary - SpecViewPerf8.01 NVIDIA 6800 Ultra w/10.3.6 G5 2GHz
3dsmax-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 7.747
catia-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 4.700
ensight-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 5.407
light-07 Weighted Geometric Mean = 4.663
maya-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 3.784
proe-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 7.433
sw-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 6.791
ugs-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 1.140

PC results with the same graphics card are many times faster.

On the bright side, I loaded up Halo and obtained very nice frame rates even compared to a PC:
2000MHz, 1536MB G5 10.3.6
Total Time=80.02s
Average frame rate=58.73fps
Below 5fps= 8% (time) 0% (frames) (6.566s spent in 9 frames)
Below 10fps= 8% (time) 0% (frames)
Below 15fps= 9% (time) 0% (frames)
Below 20fps= 9% (time) 0% (frames)
Below 25fps= 13% (time) 1% (frames)
Below 30fps= 16% (time) 3% (frames)
Below 40fps= 31% (time) 12% (frames)
Below 50fps= 43% (time) 21% (frames)
Below 60fps= 54% (time) 32% (frames)
###Sound Options###
Hardware Acceleration= No
Sound Quality= Normal
Environmental Sound= No
Sound Variety= High
###Video Options###
Resolution= 1280 x 1024
Refresh rate= 0 Hz
Framerate throttle= No Vsync
Specular= Yes
Shadows= Yes
Decals= Yes
Particles= Off
Texture Quality= High

I have seen high-end PC scores range from 65 to 80 at similar settings depending on PC type (all with the ultra). I bet a 2.5 G5 would be very comparable to the fastest PCs.