NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT: Bringing NV4x to the Masses
by Derek Wilson on September 7, 2004 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Test
As of yet, ATI does not have a comparable part to the 6600 or the 6600 GT. They are working on bringing an R4xx based midrange chip out at some point in the future, but we haven't gotten any concrete details about possible parts yet. For this review, we took a look at the X600 XT as a comparison point, but as it turns out, this isn't as helpful as we had hoped. The major problem is that we wanted a good comparison with current and previous generation GPUs, and the only way we could effectively do that was by comparing AGP cards to these PCI Express solutions. As such, most of the numbers other than the 6600 GT and the X600 XT have been run on our 3400+ graphics system. The Doom 3 and Source Engine AGP benchmarks were run on the overclocked FX53, and so aren't as comparable to the rest of the world.But we feel that this is an acceptable setup in light of the fact that PCI Express systems will have to compete with AGP systems. Our graphics test platform is based on AMD, and this serves us well enough in simply comparing how well the 6600 does in modern games (which are mostly graphics limited anyway). As long as the processor is powerful enough to keep from becoming a large bottleneck we will have a clue about NV43 performance. And we feel we've accomplished this. Here's our test setup.
Performance Test Configuration |
|
Processor(s): |
AMD Athlon 64 3400+ |
RAM: |
2 x 512Mb OCZ 3500 Platinum Ltd (2:3: 2:10) |
Hard Drives |
Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer) |
Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers |
VIA Hyperion 4.51 |
Video Card(s): |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT |
Video Drivers: |
ATI Catalyst 4.6 |
Operating System(s): |
Windows XP Professional SP2 |
Motherboards: |
MSI MS-6702E (VIA K8T800 Pro Chipset) |
The 61.77 drivers were used on all but the 6600 GT, which was powered by the 65.37 beta drivers. On the ATI side, most of the numbers shown here were run with the 4.6 Catalyst, except the X600 XT which was run with the 4.8 version.
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Saist - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
ksherman : overclock a GF2 MX? I think you have that confused with a GF4-4200. I've never been able to successfully OC a GF2 MX.mcveigh : Nvidia does have intentions to add DVI->Component adapter support into Forceware. Good luck on it being stable though.
Jalf: If you read the beginning of the article, you'll note that Anandtech originally was going to compare the 6600GT to the ATi Radeon X600 series card because there was no "underpowered" X800-PE to compete with the 6600GT. All of those only 2 card charts were showing the PCIe 6600GT vs. the nearest (under-pricepoint) Radeon PCIe product.
Questar : Read my earlier note and stop trolling please. It's rather obvious why the charts suddenly changed if you had bothered to read the words and not the pretty pictures. Most of the article was comparing PCIe cards to AGP cards. Please, think before you troll.
Illissius : It's not really that odd. The GF6 tech is present in full, so the 6600GT does benifit from the better memory controller and other optimizations. However, as we notice, once we start enable filtering, the card is easily decimated by the competition. I think I'll stick with my 9800 Pro's for now.
mickyb : if memory serves correctly, the stock cooling fan was ~50 db back in May. It was still a little obnoxious for a fan, but nowhere near as bad as it's older brethren. Looking at the card Anandtech appeared to have, I'd guess the noise range was probably between 40-50 db. Doesn't look like Nvidia changed much.
DeathByDuke - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
argh, keep charts consistent!also, would make more sense to directly compare to the 9800 XT/Pro, as they are in same price bracket, unlike X600/9600. meh. same applies to all the other sites. I dont give a damn if 9800 isnt on PCI-Express, tests have shown, like AGP 8x vs AGP 4x, theres no damn difference outside margins of error. so.... AGP 6600 should perform the same. At least we'd know then whether this £150 9800 Pro is worth it against a £150-£200 6600. I'm off to pray the X700 reviews dont pit it against a Geforce PCX 5300, Cos thats precisely what comparing a 6600 to a 9600/X600 is.
ksherman - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
yeah i see it now... not sure how i missed that :D. It certainly sounds like a kickn' card! One thing i was disappointed about in the article was that you didnt try and overclock the card... That was one of the things that made the GForce2 MX a great buy. Im not sure if that is something that still carries into the current gen cards, but i would be interesting to see how well it ocsmcveigh - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
read the article.inshort: not yet but they are exprcted to.
ksherman - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
do they make a non-PCIe version? I really dont want to spend the money to convert to Intelmcveigh - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
anyone know if it can take a dvi->component adapter?I heard a rumor the 6600 series would be able to do this like radeon's can.
FuryVII - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Yea, "nobody 'looses'".mickyb - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
How loud is this card? I need something quiter than I have. I built a SFF system for my stereo rack and it looks like this card may be the ticket.Jalf - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Yeah, I wondered about that too. Why did some of the charts only show two cards? I wouldn't call it a piece of shit article, and the card does look like really great value, but I did wonder about that. :)Still, I'd call it a good article, and a good card.
Questar - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
OMFG I can't beleive what has happened to this place.Can we please at least have the charts consistant from one page to another? Let's see on this page I'll make a chart with a 6800U and an X600, then on this page I'll throw in 10 other cards, and on the next page I'll take two out!
What a piece of shit article.