Nvidia 6600 GT AGP Roundup --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Capturing The Middle Ground

If women are attracted to bright shiny objects, then men must be attracted to bright shiny toys that growl in the dark. How else to explain their fascination with, among other things, fast cars, computer hardware and high-fidelity sound systems? In fact, we can find some remarkable parallels among the magazines and fan sites that cater to these groups of enthusiasts. For example, while car reviewers rave about the latest Ferrari or Porsche and how fast they accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h, we discuss the merits of NVIDIA versus ATI using numerous benchmark comparisons. As we all know, not many people can afford a Ferrari; most of us can only choose between Toyota and Ford. Computer hardware is much more affordable but as always, there is a price to pay for the boasting rights that is accorded to the latest and greatest. We may all yearn for two NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultras to run SLI with, but in reality, most people are only willing to pay for a mid-range card, like the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT. It is only appropriate that we do not focus solely on the expensive, drool-worthy hardware and neglect the more practical folks. Specifically, we looked at the mid-range price bracket and decided to focus on products featuring NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 GT graphics processing units (GPUs) for this article.

NVIDIA launched its GeForce 6600 GT cards in the US$199 price bracket late last September. Initially, the GeForce 6600 GT cards were native PCI Express products but by November, the AGP versions were introduced. All the GeForce 6600 GT cards in our shootout are AGP versions though they should perform similarly to its PCI Express cousins. This price segment is probably the most competitive and probably makes up the bulk of the graphics cards sold on the retail front. Vendors know a solid product here can generate high sales figures and hence, they have presented a wide selection of products varying in their features and bundled extras.

To make things more confusing for the first time buyer, not all GeForce 6600 GT cards are equal. The default clock speeds for the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT GPU and memory are 500MHz and 900MHz DDR respectively. However, some vendors have chosen to clock their products faster while others empower end-users to overclock their cards by including user-friendly software tools. Finally, there are those who add extra features at a slight cost to entice buyers into choosing them. Therefore, we have gathered nine such cards using the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT GPUs (AGP) from Albatron, ASUS, Chaintech, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Inno3D, Leadtek, MSI and have put them through their paces in this shootout to help you find that right card to meet all your different needs. More importantly, these cards deliver respectable performance without breaking your bank.

Which of these 9 cards will survive the ordeal?

First, let us have a brief overview of a standard GeForce 6600 GT card before we highlight the features of the different cards in this shootout. The table below outlines the basic features that one should expect from your vanilla GeForce 6600 GT. Those who would like to learn more about the GeForce 6600 series can refer to this detailed article: Q4 2004 Performance Midrange GPU/VPU Shootout (PCIe)

Typical NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT Technical Specifications

GraphicsEngine	NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GTGPU Stock 2D GPU clock= 300MHz Stock 3D GPU clock= 500MHz (varies on some cards) 8 pixel renderingpipelines 3 vertex pipelines(geometry engines) 128-bit DDR3memory controller CineFX3.0 Shading Engine Vertex Shaders Support for DX9.0 Vertex Shader 3.0 DisplacementMapping VertexFrequency Stream Divider (GeometryInstancing) Infinitelength vertex programs (supported inhardware) Pixel Shaders Support for DX9.0 Pixel Shader 3.0 Full pixelbranching support MultipleRender Targets (MRTs) Infinitelength pixel programs (supported inhardware) Texturing EngineFeatures Up to 16textures per rendering pass Support for 16-bit and 32-bit floating pointformats Support forsRGB texture format for gamma textures DirectX andS3TC texture compression Full128-bit FP Precision Graphics Pipeline Native supportfor 32 / 64 / 128 bits per pixelrendering modes UltraShadow IITechnology (accelerates shadowcomputations) Intellisample 3.0Technology 16x AnisotropicFiltering Adaptive TextureFiltering Rotated GridAntialiasing Fast antialiasingand compression performance Loss-less Color,Texture and Z-Data Compressionalgorithms (in real time) Fast Z-clear High-resolutionCompression Technology (HCT) increasesperformance at high resolutions. Advanced Video andDisplay Functionality Dedicated on-chipvideo processor MPEG videoencode and decode WMV9 decodeacceleration Advancedadaptive de-interlacing High qualityvideo scaling and filtering IntegratedNTSC/PAL TV encoder support resolutions upto 1024x768 with built-in Macrovision copy protection DVD and HDTV-readyMPEG-2 decoding up to 1920x1080iresolutions Dual 400MHzRAMDACs that support resolutions of2048x1536@85Hz Dual DVO ports forinterfacing external TMDStransmitters and external TV/HDTV encoder Microsoft VideoMixing Renderer (VMR) nViewMulti-display Technology Digital VibranceControl (DVC) 3.0 NVIDIA High-PrecisionDynamic-Range (HPDR) Technology Advanced InterfaceSupport Full support ofAGP 8X using High Speed Interconnect(HSI) chip Advanced thermalmonitoring and thermal management
GraphicsMemory	128MB Graphic DDR3SDRAM Default memory clock =900MHz DDR (varies on some cards) 128-bit memoryinterface
RAMDAC	Dual integrated 10-bitper channel 400 MHz DACs thatsupport resolutions of 2048x1536@85Hz Integrated 165 MHzTMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant andHDCP ready)
Connectors	1 x DB15 analog VGAconnector (for CRT monitors and FlatPanel displays) 1 x DVI-I connector(for Digital Flat Panel displays,compatible with analog displays with converter) 1 x mini-DIN connectorfor TV-Output / VIVO (supportsTV-output resolution up to 1024x768)
DriverSupport	Driver support forWindows NT4 SP6/ 95/ 98 / Me / 2000 / XP/ XP MCE / XP 64-bit / Server 2003 SP1 64-bit Driver support forLinux IA32 / AMD64 / IA64 and FreeBSD Fully compliantprofessional OpenGL 1.5 API with NVIDIAextensions Complete DirectXsupport including 9.0c and lower
OtherInformation	AGP 2.0 / 3.0 slotrequired (1.5V) 1 PCI-assigned IRQRequired One four-pin Molexpower connector required (preferably notshared or split with Y-cable)



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