MSI GeForce NX6800GT-T2D256E

HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM: We tested the MSI NX6800GT on our current test bed consisting of a 925XE-based motherboard powered by a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 550 and 1GB of Corsair XMS2 Pro DDR2 memory, all housed in the Shuttle SB95P XPC. The first thing we did when configuring this test system was enter the BIOS and loaded the "Optimal Performance Settings." We left the memory timings set by SPD (4-4-4-12), and set the AGP aperture size to 256MB. A Seagate Barracuda was formatted, and Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 was installed. When the installation was complete, we installed the latest Intel chipset drivers. Then we installed all of the necessary drivers for the rest of our components and removed Windows Messenger from the system.  Auto-Updating, System Restore, and Drive Indexing were disabled, the hard drive was defragmented, and a 1536 MB permanent page file was created on the same partition as the Windows installation. Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance," installed the benchmarking software, and ran all of the tests.

The HotHardware Test System Small on stature, huge on performance

Installing the NX6800GT into the Shuttle SB95P originally caused us to pause and assess the situation.  First, the card was easily the largest of the three in our testing suite and we weren't originally sure that it would fit.  Luckily, it ended up just shy of the ventilation ductwork coming off of the CPU.  Using a Small Form Factor system as the testbed base can always create issues of this sort, so we can't hold MSI responsible.  However, buyers will have to take some of this into consideration if purchasing the NX6800GT for their own setups.