If one thing is clear about video cards today, it’s that there’s always something better coming right around the corner. I find it a little disconcerting that the fastest video card of last year, the NVIDIA GeForcee 7800GTX 512MB is probably going to be replaced by the next NVIDIA card within a month or two and ATI’s X1800XT which was announced in October will likely be replaced this month by something better.. How companies like ASUS and GIGABYTE can survive within the constantly released video card circus, I have no clue.

In any event, NVIDIA has been around over 13 years, a relatively short time in the scheme of video cards and computers with companies like GIGABYTE being around many years longer than that. NVIDIA is currently concentrated on the PC market with forays into the gaming console market with the PS3 and handheld market with several cell phone deals. Today, NVIDIA is a multi-billion dollar company with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank.

GIGABYTE is a Tier-1 motherboard manufacturer based in Taiwan. A computer component manufacturer that’s been in the industry for many years, I’ve reviewed many a GIGABYTE product in the last few years. One thing that Gigabyte has been known for recently is their dual video cards. In 2005 GIGABYTE announced their first 3D1 card based upon the ever-popular 6600GT card. Today I’m reviewing the 3D1 card based upon 2 6800GT cards. The concept of dual video chips on the same video card for the consumer gaming market originated by a company called 3DFX with the advent of their Voodoo chip in conjunction with a company called Obsidian way back in 1996. It is hard to imagine that it’s been almost 10 years since that time.