I have been attracted to the ASUS V9999GT card, which has the following specification:

1. Full 6800GT core of 16 pixel shaders and 6 vertex shaders, running at 350MHz.
2. Slower 128MB DDR1 memory running at 350MHz (700MHz DDR, unlike a true GT, which runs at 1000MHz DDR).
3. 256bit core to memory pipline.

The V999GT is a one-of-a-kind product, as no other manufacturer has combined the true 6800GT core with the slower non-ultra memory.

I am comparing it to the vanilla 6800, which only has 12 pixel shaders and 5 vertex shaders and a 25 MHz slower core. They both share the same slow memory and I am wondering if the benefit provided by the extra shaders in the V99999GT is worth the extra cost.

Here are the prices of the two cards:

1. 6800 vanilla card ($480 Australian)
2. ASUS V9999GT card ($530 Australian).

Given the choices I have the following questions:

1. Are the extra vertex and pixel shaders in the V9999GT effective even when using the same slow memory as the 6800?

2. Are the extra shaders going to provide better head-room, than the 6800, as games demand more complex calculations in the future, even with the slow memory?

3. I have been trying to find out if shader efficiency is directly affected by memory performance, or does the memory speed mostly effect raw texture processing?

4. What about the overclocking of the ram on the V9999GT? This could give the extra shaders better performance.

5. The ram on the V99999GT is rated at 450MHz (900MHz DDR). Yet I have seen reports on other forums that it doesn't scale to that. Could an increase in voltage be required? Would placing heatsinks on the memory help?

6. Could the additional shaders cause the card to bog down due to the lack of bandwidth to feed them?

Of course there are plenty of hyperthetical answers to these questions. Unfortunately there are no benchmarks anywhere in english on any of well known sites. Here is one review however (in Polish I think):

http://www.benchmark.pl/artykuly/rec...us_9999GT.html

Ultimately my question comes down to:

Is the ASUS V9999GT card worth the extra money over the vanilla 6800?

Thanks guys.