Ennyah GeForce PCX 6600 Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Conclusion

From its outward appearances, the Ennyah PCX6600 may seem like a throwback to another era, when green was the only color for PCBs; in fact it kind of resembled graphics cards from the GeForce4 era. If that is the only weakness with the Ennyah PCX6600, then we will just call it 'old-school' and leave it at that. However, beneath the exterior, the Ennyah turns out to be less than what we had expected. The lower frequency speed for the frame buffer is slight enough that most end-users would probably not be able to spot the differences unless they are running benchmarks. However in a competitive environment like the retail graphics card scene, it is indeed uncommon to see a vendor with a product that fails to match the reference design at the least.

When would we next see an Ennyah?

This leads us to a minor complaint that can apply to all graphics card vendors. The packaging for the Ennyah PCX6600 gives no hint of its handicapped clock speed. Instead, the back of the card proudly proclaims GDDR3 memory and a 256-bit memory interface. All are features that cannot be found in the actual product. Only at the side of the box do we find that the Ennyah PCX6600 is actually using normal GDDR. We recognize that vendors are reusing box designs in order to save costs but we would appreciate a higher level of transparency by having more explicit package labels. Consumers who get the Ennyah PCX6600 expecting a vanilla GeForce 6600 would be in for a surprise when they test out their new card. Of course this seems to be the common practice in the industry and we are only highlighting Ennyah as an example of the marketing tactics that one should be aware.

When it comes to other important considerations for a modern graphics card, like noise and heat output, the Ennyah PCX6600 is definitely not as good as many of its rivals. The heat output is acceptable but the noise it generates surely isn?t. With many vendors trying to improve the design of their coolers and lower the noise level, it is disappointing that Ennyah has not followed suit. The cooler is nonetheless competent enough, just that it falls short of what other vendors have incorporated. The Ennyah PCX6600 did better in the overclocking segment than we expected, but even this was tempered by the fact that the memory speed is locked. Hence, while the core speed could be ramped up to very high frequencies, the locked memory component limited its overall overclocking potential quite badly. Finally, the lackluster package, with no software included, is another shortcoming, leading us to believe that the only way for the Ennyah PCX6600 to be competitive is by having a lower price tag. However we are unable to obtain an estimated price for the Ennyah PCX6600 at the time of writing. We feel that potential buyers should only consider it if the retail price is significantly less than a normal GeForce 6600 card and if you don't mind its shortcomings.



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