Labs

Most people wouldn't associate the GeForce 6800 series with bottom-end performance, but the XT offers just that. It's based on a standard 6800 with eight pipelines instead of the usual 12, and one less than the usual five vertex shaders. The 325MHz core clock is unchanged, but this Inno3D card has only 128MB of RAM.

The changes may seem big on paper and they are

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in the real world too: they result in an average drop of around 23% over the standard 6800. This plants it firmly in entry-level territory, with 28fps in Far Cry and 24fps in Call of Duty 2. Lowering a few quality settings will give you playable frame rates, so it's just about viable as a gaming choice if you're on a tight budget.

One potential attraction is that Inno3D bundles WinDVD and WinDVD Creator, and you can take advantage of them via DVI, D-SUB, composite or S-Video (although no S-Video cable is included). At £76, it's the most expensive card in the budget category, but the performance increase over cards such as the 7300s justifies this.

However, the X1600 Pro has the edge where performance and price are concerned. It also has a dual-link DVI port, offers component output via an adapter and includes a similar amount of bundled software. The 6800 XT might be Nvidia's best entry-level challenger, but it can't match the X1600 Pro.