Nvidia 6600 GT AGP Roundup --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Chaintech SA6600G

Chaintech used a distinctive one-piece design for the aluminum cooler on their SA6600G. The heatsink is large enough to cover the GPU, memory, HSI bridge chip and is complemented by a small and quiet fan that operated with just a slight 'whoosh' that easily faded into the background. From our experience, simple one-piece cooler units such as this aren't good at keeping the card's operating temperatures low and this was echoed well in out temperature test segment. Surprisingly however, the cooler unit was capable enough that made Chaintech's SA6600G the best card in our overclocking roundup, reaching stable speeds of 580/630MHz (1260MHz DDR). Considering that the card was factory clocked at the standard 500/450MHz (900 MHz DDR), this was impressive to say the least. Just imagine the gains you might be capable if the card sported an even more lavish cooler unit, but we leave this idea to the daredevils willing to void warranty concerns (though overclocking already breaches it if you recall your terms and conditions).

A top down view of the Chaintech SA6600G.

The SA6600G has a very good mix of software, with one recent game ?Painkiller and a variety of DVD related utilities. The combination of its good overclocking performance and the comparatively full-bodied bundle is certainly an attractive one. Here is the complete inventory of what we found in our package:

WinDVD 5.0

WinDVD Creator 2.0

WinRip 2.1

Adobe Photoshop Album 1.0

Home Theater 2.1 Lite

DVD Copy 2 Lite

Game pack (5 demos in 1 CD)

Painkiller (Full version)

GeForce Series 6 User Manual

S-Video extension cord

DVI-to-VGA adaptor

Y-power cable splitter