Final Statements...

As we had pointed our earlier, the performance between the EVGA 6600GT and its competition isn’t earth shattering to recommend it right on the spot, though it’s competitive. It manages to outperform even the 6800 vanilla in select scenarios, but when we increased the load in addition to the 1600x1200 resolution; the 6800 vanilla does manage to take a lead with its faster clock speeds and more pipelines to store graphics textures. ATI’s X700 Pro, which is supposed to be a direct competitor to NVIDIA’s 6600GT GPU, is no match in games other than high quality settings at Doom III or in one of the high settings in Half-Life 2; it’s quite a surprise to see ATI take backseat to NVIDIA’s 6600GT especially when it should be the winner in Half-Life 2 just like NVIDIA should lead in Doom III tests. Although the initial testing was tiring with Doom III and Half-Life 2 titles due to their biased performance, the fine tweaking done by both GPU makers has equalized performance to make it as balanced as possible. Considering that sponsored gaming titles are the thing of the future, it’s hopeful to expect companies constantly working on titles to reach equilibrium.

The thermal efficiency of the card is perfectly fine with no hindrance in overclocking despite the lack of RAMsinks. The board layout in general in addition to the integrated video out ports is similar to what other manufacturers offer, so there’s nothing to complain about here. The only drawback we did notice was the lack of applications bundle in the package, however, we’ll clear that right now to see if the price is lesser than what EVGA’s competition retails their 6600GT adapters for.

Although EVGA managed to impress us with its 6800 vanilla PCIe simply because of its significantly low price tag, this is not the case this time around. At Newegg.com, we found its 6600GT for $169.00 at the time of publication and compared to the $166.00 price tag for Gigabyte, there’s very little value for the EVGA. The Gigabyte 6600GT comes prepackaged with Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising, Thief and PowerDVD software. Quite honestly, PowerDVD isn’t as thrilling of an application as it once was. However, the games are certainly interesting. The only reason to go for the EVGA card is if one of your main requirements is customer service or if the gaming titles don’t matter to you much. Other than that, any other 6600GT with a decent bundle and a competitive price tag would probably be better than EVGA’s 6600GT.

For all your graphics card buying needs, check out Newegg.com