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NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT Roundup. Round 1: PCI-EAuthor: Anna TimofeevaDate: 20/01/2005
Introduction
This material is the first part of review on benchmarking GeForce 6600GT video cards made by various manufacturers. The need and urgency for such a review is beyond doubts - all the cards to be reviewed are positioned (and sell) over the mainstream sector (over 200$) so popular among the consumers (and thrifty gamers, first). Video boards made on the chip currently in questions are not sold for the PCI-Express market, but in the AGP make as well, so we found it useful to partition the material in two parts, which is helpful in avoiding the heaps of graphs and the overall mess.
Well, let's go ahead. These days, things in the middle PCI-E sector are hot to the highest degree because NVIDIA and ATI contributed their very successful solutions to the sector. ATI is still undergoing some sort of "transition period" - all are waiting for X800 to hit the retail. Furthermore, the Canadian company brought a nice New Year gift to all the consumers through pushing down the prices recommended for the recently announced Õ800XL and Õ800. While the former is poorly related to the topic of this material because of the price, the X800 is best suited to today's topic. But that is still in prospect. Hopefully, X800 cards will not be too long to appear in the retail. The already known Radeon X700 PRO will be reviewed as a rival to boards based on the GeForce 6600GT chip. Unlike its competitor lacking suffixes in the names (X700), the board is enjoying a successful travel over the retail shelves.
In the AGP sector, ATI is a bit less confident. The only thing to oppose (for today!) NVIDIA 6600GT AGP equipped with the HSI (High-Speed Interconnect) bridge is 9800Pro (XT). 9800Pro(XT) has turned outdated in terms of technology and performance... In fact, we'll be comparing the performance in detail in the second part. Back to our PCI-Express. We are reviewing five video cards made by the most eminent partners of NVIDIA: ASUS, Gigabyte, Leadtek, Gainward, and XFX. All these are not new kids on the market, including the Russian market as well. There is some exception - XFX Graphics, a brand much less known on the Russian market unlike Leadtek, let alone ASUS and Gigabyte. Nevertheless, XFX is one of the major partners of NVIDIA and has been at manufacturing the chips of the company for quite a long time. Nowadays, with the competition getting acute from day to day, no one can afford to rest on laurels. The market is getting more cruel and narrow all the time, expelling those unable setting the pace or getting into the swing outboard. Well, we could contemplate endlessly on the subject, but being aware of your impatience, let's get back to our guinea pigs..
Not only do the boards differ in design and package bundle, they also offer some technical distinctions which are more amenable to review if summed up in a table: 
Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT LayoutPackage bundle
 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
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. 
XFX GeForce 6600GT LayoutPackage 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:
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) LayoutPackage bundle, design and layout.
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.
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.
OverclockingIn overclocking, only additional blowing from the PC housing fan was used, with no other modifications done to the cooling systems of the cards. The overclocking capability is a variable quantity that varies from specimen to specimen. We shall no be liable if your card failed to reach the overclocks attained by a similar card in the review. You never write to us: "What's on earth going on? My ASUS/Leadtek/etc. succeeded in reaching extra 20MHz or higher than in your review - are you understating the results" ?! :)))))))) Benchmarking GeForce 6600GT video cards
Synthetic benchmarks   
Gaming benchmarks .gif) 4xAA8xAF.gif)  
 
Final WordsPrior to announcing a verdict on each of the cards reviewed, let's make some general conclusion. No doubt, more exhaustive findings can be made no earlier than we get a video card on the base of the ATI X800 chip originally positioned by ATI as a real menace to 6600GT. For now, 6600GT is decent enough in the 200$+ (PCI-E) sector.
6600GT takes a lead over the competitor solution Õ700PRO (around 220$ +/- depending on the manufacturer and the sales place) as we have found out through all the synthetic benchmarks that we ran. However, synthetic benchmarking is far not all, many have lost interest to 3DMark and don't take the results as the truth in the last resort. Therefore, gaming applications proved to be the most indicative in terms of real performance comparisons. Of course, the major focus is put on the three "monsters" of the gaming industry of the past year - Far Cry, DOOM3, and Half-Life2. Far Cry (1.3) With AFx4 enabled, Radeon X700 PRO showed a serious lag versus 6600GT at 1280õ1024. Note that with the AA enabled, X700PRO the lag is not that pronounced at the resolutions as compared to 6600GT. In view of the generally low FPS, it doesn't make much sense benchmarking it at 1600õ1200 - this is unlikely to be ever demanded by gamers, especially with the ÀÀ+AF enabled. DOOM3 (Timedemo) There isn't much to say here. All is evident on the graphs. Just note that in the normal mode all the cards demonstrate a good gameplay at 1024x768, and superb at 1280x1024. With the ÀÀ and ÀF enabled, all the 6600GT showed a good standing at 1024õ768, whereas being on the verge at 1280õ1024. X700 PRO showed minimum gaming comfort only starting with 1024õ768, but at 1280õ1024 already the FPS drops below 20. That is why it is useless testing it at 1600õ1200 - only for the theoretical interest. Half-Life2 (our own demo recorded with the canals map) At that, on the contrary, X700PRO takes a lead (of which no one has doubts). What is nice - owners of 6600GT can stay assured that the lag card showed is not so drastical to worry about. Through a little bit of overclocking you can easily add some score points to the performance rating at the hit of the past year 2004. In conclusion, a brief summary on each of the video cards tested today: Gigabyte GeForce 6600GTWe would call it the best gift to DOOM fans who would be glad to get their favorite game as bundled item to the "right" card. It showed good overclocking results, and the overall performance is at quite a high level. The price is a pleasant surprise - about 220$ (+/- depending on the place of purchase). The GPU maximum temperature during benchmarking (in the overclocked state) was 50 degrees. No shortcomings have been found.
Gainward Powerpack! Ultra/1960 PCX XP Golden Sample GLHAs usual, Gainward supplies its smartest solutions on the market. In addition to the standard advantages of GS (and GLH!) cards, there is also faster memory of 1.6 memory access time, and "official" overclocking (the company guarantees trouble-free operation of the card at these frequencies, unlike other manufacturers who are by no means liable for the poor overclocking capabilities of their cards). Above all, there is a cooling system made as radiators, a quiet enough cooler, and the nice look of the card (plus colorful illumination). A weighty plus is support for the VIVO. The price of the splendor is at least 250$ (on the date of writing the material).
XFX GeForce 6600GTThe good-quality product by XFX is also equipped with faster than standard memory of 1.6 ns access time. Of note is also the rich package bundle. As regards the overclocking capabilities, it doesn't make a big difference among all the video cards, which is nice. It is much easier to assume the "simple mean". Among the cons, is the lack of nominal cooling for the memory chips. The 1.6 ns makes the chips heat up immensely, so we had to arrange additional blowing while overclocking. Anyway, it is not a problem gluing radiators on. Leadtek PX6600 GT TDHThe major advantage of the card is in the quiet cooling system (although, it is up to personal preferences). In all the other respects, everything is standard. Memory of 2 ns access time, decent overclocking capabilities, good package bundles. No serious flaws have been revealed. The solution will also appeal for its price - about 220$ (+/-). ASUS EN6600 GTFor the dessert - a card by ASUS, one of the industry leaders. The first thing to note is the very high quality of the cooling system which also implies cooling the memory chips, made in the form of radiators. Also note the excellent overclocking capabilities - 575(!) MHz for the core - again ASUS showed super results, which allows granting ASUS our well-deserved reward. 
So, dear readers, it's up to you to think and choose. As regards AGP products on the base of the GeForce 6600GT chip, we'll present a review on that (the second part) in the nearest time.
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