NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT Roundup. Round 1: PCI-E
XFX GeForce 6600GT Layout
Package bundle
What catches the eye at first glance is the smart design of the colorful box. Such an X-shaped box for the product is among the distinguishing traits seen in the products of the company. Inside the box, we found the following contents:
- XFX GeForce 6600GT video card;
- two 15-pin DVI/D-Sub adapters;
- S-Video cable;
- Manual;
- a drivers and utilities CD
- Games:1. Nascar Thunder 2004; 2. Commandos 3 in 3 CDs; 3. X2 The Threat in 2 CDs.
As you can see, the bundle is quite rich, the games are not forgotten, and the card itself deserves the closest look.
Design and layout
The board is made on a blue textolyte plate.
The onboard cooling system appears to be another variation on the theme of the reference. The aluminum radiator for the GPU, four memory chips over the front side of the board have no heat sinks. It's worth noting that the memory onboard also offers 1.6 ns access time.
Let's look at the graphics processor. It runs at nominal 500 MHz operating frequency and, as is seen from the marking, has revision A2, was made on the 35th week of year 2004.
There is 128 Mb GDDR3 onboard video memory with a 128-bit data transmission bus, with the memory made up of four Samsung chips marked K4J55323QF-GC16, 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). That is, the memory offers quite good overclocking capabilities.
Finishing the visual inspection, we can't help mentioning the SLI socket and two digital outputs.
Leadtek PX6600 GT TDH (GeForce 6600GT) Layout
Package bundle, design and layout.
- Leadtek PX6600GT/TDH video card;
- 15-pin DVI/D-Sub adapter;
- S-Video/HDTV adapter;
- User's manual;
- a drivers and utilities CD;
- Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time;
- Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow
In practice, the cooling system proved as modest as its exterior. After all, this is one of the quietest cooling systems on 6600GT cards reviewed today. We already covered the design like that in our past review on video cards based on the GeForce 6600 chip - an aluminum radiator with a fan on top of the GPU.
As regards the core/memory frequencies, all is standard. The GPU frequency is 500 MHz, and the chip was made on the 30th week of year 2004, has revision À2.
The card offers 128 Mb of video memory, with a 128-bit data transmission bus. Its four Samsung memory chips are fitted on the front side of the board; there are no heat sinks, all are made in the BGA form factor, offer 2 ns access time. This is equivalent to 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR) of operating frequency. The standard operating frequency of video memory fully meets that.
There is also a standard set of outputs - analogous, digital, and TV-OUT. The card also offer support for the SLI.
Note that Leadtek has recently announced a new solution on the GeForce 6600GT chip - the PX6600 GT TDH Extreme video card, an originally overclocked version with the operating frequencies 550/560 (1120MHz DDR).
ASUS EN6600 GT Layout
Package bundle, design and layout.
- ASUS EN6600GT video card;
- 15-pin DVI/D-Sub adapter;
- S-Video/RCA adapter;
- User's manual;
- The proprietary CD-Suite containing driver & utilities CDs, ASUS DVD, MediaShow SE 2.0, PowerDirector 3DE, and Joint Operations - Typhoon Rising.
The board itself looks spiffy enough - the cooling system made up of a radiator with a fan on the GPU and neat radiators on the memory chips is made of aluminum (styled to look like copper). The PCB design is identical to the reference, and the color of the textolyte is dark blue like in all the cards of ASUS' EN6600 series.
It has to be noted that ASUS' EN6600GT series also offers boards that sell under the EN6600 GT TOP Limited Edition brand name whose distinguishing feature is DOOM3 as a bundled item (the TOP DOOM3 Limited Edition series), and memory of 1.6ns access time (the whole TOP Limited Edition series). We already reviewed the regular version EN6600 GT of standard frequencies (on EN6600GT LE cards, the frequency of the graphic processor is overstated by default and amounts to 550MHz), and of 2 ns memory access time.
This is equivalent to 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR) of operating frequency at which the memory runs.
The GeForce 6600GT graphic processor also runs at its specified 500MHz, as it should. The GPU was made on the 41st week of year 2004 and has revision À2.
The card also supports the SLI, and offers a digital and analogous outputs, as well as a TV-OUT.
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