NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT Roundup. Round 1: PCI-E
Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT Layout
Package bundle
- Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT (GV-NX66T128D);
- 15-pin DVI/D-Sub and HDTV adapters;
- Detailed manual;
- Drivers & utilities CD, including V-Tuner2 Plus;
- PowerDVD rev 5.0 DVD player;
- DOOM3 - a 3-pack CD gift edition.
Design and layout
The board is made on blue textolyte which is traditional for Gigabyte in the manufacture of NVIDIA chips. The PCB design is an exact replica of NVIDIA's reference design.
The shape and dimensions of the onboard cooling system fully match what we saw on the very first 6600GT specimen. The aluminum radiator with a small fan covers the GPU only, leaving four memory chips on the front side of the board, with no heat-sinks. As we have mentioned repeatedly, that is not a must - the heat emission of the card is small enough, and the recommended power rating of the PSU is 300W (of course, that does not apply to Codegen PSUs.
Let's look at the GPU. The GeForce 6600GT with its nominal operating frequency 500MHz (no deviations from the references) was made on the 35th week of year 2004 and has revision À2
There is 128 Mb GDDR3 memory with a 128 bit data transmission bus assembled with four Samsung memory chips marked K4J55323QF-GC20 made in the BGA form factor, of 2 ns access time, which is equivalent to 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR) operating frequency. The nominal memory operating frequency on Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT fully meets that.
There is also a welded spot for VIVO, although the chip is not installed.
Of course, there is a SLI jack,
and a standard set of outputs - analogous, digital, and TV-OUT
Gainward Powerpack! Ultra/1960 PCX XP Golden Sample GLH (GeForce 6600GT)
Package bundle
- Gainward Powerpack! Ultra/1960 PCX XP Golden Sample GLH (GeForce 6600GT);
- two 15-pin DVI/D-Sub adapters;
- VIVO splitter;
- Drivers & utilities CD (including EXPERTool and Adobe Acrobat Reader);
- WinDVD 4 and Muvee AutoProducer3;
- Colorful manual
Design and layout
The formerly reviewed boards based on the GeForce 6600GT chip offered the fully reference PCB design, and made a difference with merely the color of the textolyte and a small modification done to the cooling system. As regards the Gainward solution, we see more radical changes done - at last, bored too much of NVIDIA reference clones, we can now look at some "alternative" versions. The board is made on a red textolyte plate, of course.
Following its tradition, Gainward has introduced modifications to the cooling system as well - on top of the standard aluminum radiator with a small fan covering the GPU, there has been added the cooling of memory chips positioned over the front side of the board - look at the neatly placed aluminum radiators. Since the board offers faster onboard memory - 1.6 ns access time - which makes it heat up more immensely, such a far sight really deserves praise. Unlike the High-end models, the cooling system runs absolutely noise-free, which is fun indeed.
GPU GeForce 6600GT offers nominal 500 MHz operating frequency, and as is seen from the marking, the chip of revision A2 was made on the 30th week of year 2004. It is worth noting that 500 MHz is the frequency of the Safe Mode (with the proprietary utility EXPERTool that comes bundled with the card, you can set the frequencies for the chip and memory to 540/1150 MHz, respectively. Gainward guarantees a trouble-free operation of the card at these frequencies, which makes all the Golden Sample series cards stand out, through specially selected chips and use of memory faster than that fitted on the reference boards).
The card offers 128 Mb GDDR3 of video memory with a 128 bit data transmission bus assembled with four Samsung memory chips made in the BGA form factor, of 1.6 ns access time, which is equivalent to 625 MHz (1250 MHz DDR) operating frequency. The nominal operating frequency is 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR).
The Gainward solution can also boast support for the VIVO, as is seen from the Philips SAA7115HL chip. Remember that NVIDIA's reference video card also offered these capabilities unlike the solutions of many other manufacturers where the chip itself was not installed albeit there was a spot allocated for it.
Also, Gainward Powerpack! Ultra/1960 PCX XP Golden Sample GLH also offers support for NVIDIA SLI. There is another trait of the board - it offers two digital outputs.
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