...or my initial experience with the 6800 line
So after toying with an FX5950 for a brief period of time some months ago (and totally disliking it), I got the chance to get to play with the latest two nVidia offerings: the 6800GT and the 6800U.
So I installed the "monster" last night (that's the Ultra) in my main rig (AthlonXP 3000+, nForce2-400 mobo, 512MB RAM) since there is a Rage3D review featuring the latest high end cards in the works. Impressions? Very good. Since I have a 480W PSU from Thermaltake the power issue was...well...not an issue, so I can concentrate on the card's performance.
nVidia is on the rebound. No doubt about it. The card is damn fast, and it chew whatever I threw at it. See kids, that's why competition is good for you. I haven't noticed any IQ differences from my Radeons, which is a VERY good thing; of course as always the nVidia cards are more bright than the Radeons (this exists for quite a while, even before the Geforce 4).
My only gripes?
a) AA quality. It's not there yet. 4xAA is worse than the Radeon's 4xAA, and this comes from a person who prefers to play at 10fps than turn off Anti-Aliasing; so my eye is pretty spoiled with smoothness I have also noticed in some games (Euro 2004 comes to mind) that AA causes things to be more "blurry", dunno if I am expressing it right. I toyed a bit with 8xS, and although AA quality improved substancially, the drop in performance (although not major, like the first benchmarks, where with 8xS enabled the performance tanked) made it slower than the X800's 6xAA (i am not so sure about that, I will bench it and let you know; but it felt like my X800 Pro in 6xAA speed-wise).
Noise. Yes the fan is loud for me; when you boot the fan starts up at full speed, and when you enter Windows it speeds down. I don't like it. Hopefully you can avoid that by buying a GT (I also have a GT here, when I finish with the Ultra I will install that)
These are my comments after spending five hours with the card; so if I come up with anything else I will let you know And the review is coming; probably late next week.
Edit: Seems nVidia's drivers are not what they used to. I hadn't seen a 16-color desktop since the Win95 days 
Well, at least after five consequtive(sp?) reboots it went away 