Certain MSI GeForce 6800 GT Graphics Cards Do Not Comply to Specs - A Germany-based web-site
TechPowerUp claimed late last week that at least some of MSI's retail PCI Express x16 graphics cards sold as
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT products had the GeForce 6800 graphics chips on them. The original NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT graphics chip has 16 pixel processors and 6 vertex processors, whereas the GeForce 6800 graphics processing unit employs 12 pixel and 5 vertex processors, thus, delivering lower performance.
TechPowerUp! has follow-up information on the MSI 6800GT's that were delivered with degraded performance - MSI delivered 350 of the cards out to the retail chain and has offered "immediate free replacement or full refund" of those cards. The root cause is still not known, as MSI simply cites an "unknown chip problem" but the translated German press release points to the additional bridge chip of the NV45 package.