Although EVGA could be a bit more innovating, the company has managed to impress us with competitive performance and comparatively lower prices than other manufacturers. Therefore, we've had no problems recommending EVGA to those of you with strict budget guidelines. After evaluating its 6800 PCIe graphics adapter late last week, today we?ll take a look at EVGA's 6600GT. Though we don't hope to see a significant increase in performance at stock speeds, we do have a keen interest in the card's overall value in terms of its retail cost. Furthermore, the overclocking results should be quite promising as well.

That said, perhaps one of the most discouraging factors with EVGA cards is the lack of applications bundle. Unlike Gigabyte that packs in more than a single game in addition to PowerDVD software, EVGA doesn't comprise a single application. However, they make up for this in cost, so in reality, this could prove to be more viable for those of you with less concern for the included applications. Therefore, it's truly a mixed way of looking at this issue; you could either prefer it or despise it.

Our initial thoughts on this card and other 6600GT cards aren't all that exciting considering that you won't notice a breakthrough in performance from one card to another, since they are based on the same specifications. Of course, you may notice a slight boost in performance from manufacturers such as BFGTech that's known to factory overclock their cards. The main recommendation factor ultimately boils down to the overclocking outcome, at least somewhat, final cost of the product and the bundle, if it increases the value of the card. The performance is possibly the last step in recommending the same model of graphics adapter from manufacturer to another.

Without further ado, let's continue on with the board layout, overclocking tests, performance results and the final recommendation

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