GeForce 6800 GS is faster than its main competitor, Radeon X800 GTO. On our benchmarking GeForce 6800 GS was up to 26.03% faster than Radeon X800 GTO, depending on video configuration and software used (Doom 3 excluded). On Doom 3 the performance difference was even higher: GeForce 6800 GS was up to 63% faster than its competitor, showing us that Doom 3 is really Radeon X800 series Achilles’ Heel.

Compared to GeForce 6800 GT, something interesting happened. They achieved the same performance on 3DMark2001 SE and 3DMark03, and achieved very similar performance on Doom 3. But on 3DMark05 GeForce 6800 GS was up to 11.78% faster than GeForce 6800 GT and on Far Cry it was up to 16.45% faster. To us, this means that GeForce 6800 GS is clearly optimized to DirectX 9.0c (shader 3.0) games.

Looking for GeForce 6800 GT prices, we think online pricing is outdated. On Shopping.com GeForce 6800 GT is being listed at a higher price than GeForce 6800 GS (USD 230~270 range). Go figure.

So, between GeForce 6800 GT, GeForce 6800 GS, Radeon X800 GT and Radeon X800 GTO, GeForce 6800 GS is the best one, and it is our recommendation to users that can’t stand an entry-level VGA performance and don’t want to pay more than USD 200 on a decent video card.