XFX GeForce 6800 GS Review – NVIDIA’s Mid-Range Monster

Half-Life 2 – Canals09

Our second HL2 run through takes place in the Canals portion of the game where there are a lot of water reflections to deal with.  Here’s a typical scene from our run through:

The X1600 XT almost has a fighting chance here on the Canals09 level of Half-Life 2 that is very shader intensive.  The 6800 GS still has the win, but not by as much, though when running in SLI mode the 6800 GS is again a very impressive GPU.  Performance gains of 64% without AA and AF and nearly 80% with it are very noticeable and make an additional $200 video card a worthy investment down the road.