The Lull Before the Launch

With both ATI and NVIDIA planning to release their next generation graphics processors soon, there has not been that much movement in the graphics card market as of late. Yes, ATI has introduced its CrossFire technology to counter NVIDIA's SLI but they are not found in retail channels yet. So what do graphics card companies do while working on the next technological breakthrough? Answer: they double the memory size of their existing products. It has happened in the past (RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB anyone?), it is happened very recently (the relatively new RADEON X800 XL 512MB) and it will likely happen again. Size does matter; with the profusion of all sorts of numbers on the packaging of a graphics card, some consumers may be confused, leading them to fall back on their own assumptions such as this:- "512MB is surely better than 256MB, right? It's twice as much and costs a bomb! Of course it MUST be better". Other more knowledgeable buyers may just desire that extra memory for the bragging rights of having the most powerful graphics card ever available (period). But how true are those assumptions?

Is more always better? Leadtek's 512MB GeForce 6800 Ultra.

There is a definite increase in performance for typical applications going from 128MB to 256MB now, given that the graphics controller is of midrange standard at least. However as we have seen in our review of the Sapphire RADEON X800 XL 512MB , the performance gains may not be as impressive as the frame buffer size seems to indicate. While the 512MB version of the ATI RADEON X800 XL managed to grab the headlines from NVIDIA for a while - which may well be the whole point of the product - there are already a few 512MB versions of NVIDIA's top range GeForce 6800 Ultra in the market for a little while now. Today, we will be looking at one such rare card, the Leadtek WinFast PX6800 Ultra TDH 512MB. Below, we list its technical specifications: