NVIDIA's GeForce 6600GT AGP: The Little Bridge that Could
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 16, 2004 12:15 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Head to Head: NVIDIA GeForce 5900XT vs. NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT
If we take a look at the price of the GeForce FX 5900XT in our RealTime Pricing Engine, we see a card that hovers somewhere around $185. The 5900XT is the lower rung of the high end graphics cards from NVIDIA at the end of the year in 2003.
Under Doom 3, the 5900XT just can't keep up with the 6600GT, especially at higher resolutions. We are seeing the same type of pattern we saw with the 9800 Pro head to head: as resolution increases, so does the 6600GT's lead.
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Doom 3 Performance |
|||
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NVIDIA GeForce 5900XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
640 x 480 |
65.6 |
105.9 |
61.4% |
|
800 x 600 |
50.2 |
100.3 |
99.8% |
|
1024 x 768 |
36.3 |
82 |
125.9% |
|
1280 x 1024 |
25.4 |
58.7 |
131.1% |
|
1600 x 1200 |
18.9 |
43.4 |
129.6% |
|
Winner |
|
- |
6600GT |
This test isn't even a contest. The 6600GT makes short work of the 5900XT under valve's VST test. Though, with Half-Life two finally released, we'll have to see just how good a predictor of performance the VST is.
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Counterstrike: Source Visual Stress Test Performance |
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NVIDIA GeForce 5900XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
640 x 480 |
81.8 |
191.8 |
134.5% |
|
800 x 600 |
60.6 |
175.3 |
189.3% |
|
1024 x 768 |
40.2 |
133.3 |
231.6% |
|
1280 x 1024 |
24.8 |
83.3 |
235.9% |
|
1600 x 1200 |
18.9 |
68 |
259.8% |
|
Winner |
|
- |
6800GT |
|
Unreal Tournament 2004 |
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|
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NVIDIA GeForce 5900XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
640 x 480 |
72.7 |
72.3 |
0.6% |
|
800 x 600 |
71.4 |
71.4 |
0.0% |
|
1024 x 768 |
67.2 |
70.5 |
4.9% |
|
1280 x 1024 |
51.9 |
62.8 |
21.0% |
|
1600 x 1200 |
39.1 |
50.2 |
28.4% |
|
Winner |
|
- |
6600GT |
The 5900XT is not playable at anything above 1024x768 in FarCry, but the 6600GT holds on and manages over a 100% performance advantage at the higher resolutions.
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Far Cry 1.3 Performance |
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|
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NVIDIA GeForce 5900XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
640 x 480 |
60.2 |
86.3 |
43.4% |
|
800 x 600 |
45.7 |
80.8 |
76.8% |
|
1024 x 768 |
33.3 |
67.9 |
103.9% |
|
1280 x 10 24 |
23 |
48.7 |
111.7% |
|
1600 x 1200 |
16.4 |
37.1 |
126.2% |
|
Winner |
|
- |
6600GT |
Halo continues the 6600GT reign with almost double the performance across the board.
|
Halo 1.05 Performance |
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NVIDIA GeForce 5900XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
640 x 480 |
71.4 |
131.7 |
84.5% |
|
800 x 600 |
55.1 |
111.7 |
102.7% |
|
1024 x 768 |
39.7 |
82.4 |
107.6% |
|
1280 x 1024 |
26.5 |
56.9 |
114.7% |
|
1600 x 1200 |
19.2 |
41.3 |
115.1% |
|
Winner |
|
- |
6600GT |
This OpenGL benchmark shows a tie between the two boards, and at lower resolutions the 5900XT board is acutally leading the 6600GT here. This older quake III engine based game definitely shows a side we haven't seen, but so far the 5900XT has tied one benchmark while the 6600GT has won all the rest. Let's contine on and see what the rest stack up like.
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Wolfenstein: |
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NVIDIA GeForce 5900XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
640 x 480 |
111.8 |
107.6 |
3.8% |
|
800 x 600 |
110.3 |
107.5 |
2.5% |
|
1024 x 768 |
103.7 |
104.2 |
0.5% |
|
1280 x 1024 |
84 |
88 |
4.8% |
|
1600 x 1200 |
64 |
68 |
6.3% |
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Winner |
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- |
Tie |
In Battlefield vietnam, the results are pretty steadily in favor of the 6600GT: it wins with over a 50% performance advantage every time.
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Battlefield - |
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NVIDIA GeForce 5900XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
640 x 480 |
139 |
217 |
56.1% |
|
800 x 600 |
106 |
180 |
69.8% |
|
1024 x 768 |
76 |
134 |
76.3% |
|
1280 x 1024 |
53 |
97 |
83.0% |
|
1600 x 1200 |
36 |
68 |
88.9% |
|
Winner |
|
- |
6600GT |
Running with 78% higher fps at 1600x1200, the 6600GT closes out its victory against the 5900XT.
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The Sims 2 Performance |
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NVIDIA GeForce 5900XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
800 x 600 |
33.4 |
50.3 |
50.6% |
|
1024 x 768 |
29 |
42.1 |
45.2% |
|
1280 x 1024 |
20.3 |
32.6 |
60.6% |
|
1600 x 1200 |
15.6 |
27.8 |
78.2% |
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Winner |
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- |
6600GT |
In every test but one the 6600GT dominated the 5900XT in performance and value. In our head to head battles, price was a key factor. Now that the 6600GT has entered the AGP market, there is no reason to look at either of these other two AGP based products.
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66 Comments
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Pythias - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
>>The impact of the bridge, as I mentioned in the review, is negligible. The bridge + slower memory results in a 0 - 5% performance difference between the PCI Express and AGP versions of the 6600GT (the 5% figure being because of the additional memory bandwidth courtesy of the 500/1000 clock vs. 500/900).Just so you guys know, I went out and picked up a vanilla 6800 for inclusion in my upcoming Half Life 2 GPU comparison. Know that your voice has been heard :)
Take care,
Anand<<<
Anand, you kick teh bootay.
Poser - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
#42 He's not benching them with the fastest processor he can get his hands on just to show off what cool hardware he's got, you know. If you match up a fast video card with a slower processor, you can get benchmark scores that are CPU limited, instead of GPU limited like you want to see. You can see a little bit of what CPU limiting looks like when you look at the low resolution benchmarks with older games, and even with Unreal Tournament 2004 in this review. Every card ends up with essentially the same score, because it's no longer the video card that's the bottleneck -- it's the rest of the system, chiefly the CPU.If you knew all that already, my apologies for the mini-lecture =). I agree that it's nice to occassionally see benchmarks with a range of processors so that you can spot "yours" and see what sort of performance boost you'd get by upgrading, but it hardly seems practical to do that for every video card review and if you've got to pick ONE processor to test everything on, then the fastest available is a good choice.
thebluesgnr - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
#41,the PT894 Pro chipset should be sampling right now.
bhtooefr - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
draazeejs: Anand compared it against other cards that are the same price. So, a 2 year old card that is now that same price IS a fair comparison.Niatross - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
I know you've heard this comment a million times before. I don't have a FX 55 I've got an Athlon 2500 mobile. These benchs mean absolutly nothing to meTanclearas - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
"Most enthusiast users appear to be sticking with their AGP platforms and while they would consider a GPU upgrade, they are not willing to upgrade their motherboard (and sometimes CPU and memory) just to get a faster graphics card."Don't you think this has something to do with the fact that you still can't purchase AMD PCIe boards? Not to mention that it looks like the only (realistic) SLI solution that will be available in the next several months will be for Athlon 64.
Pete - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
#28, as ATi won't be releasing the X700XT in AGP form for quite some time, and as they're actually going to (continue to) use the 9800P as competition at the $200 price point, your accusation is wholly without merit. If you want to see X700XT vs. 6600GT numbers, just read Anand's X700XT review. As it stands, the 6600GT is unchallenged in the field of new AGP cards at $200.But it's way overpriced for the $250 NewEgg is charging for it, dual DVI or not. For $250, you're better off with the BFG 6800OC at Outpost.com (which may even come with Far Cry, making it an even better deal).
coldpower27 - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
The review at firingsquad also seems to paint the same pciture, the conclusion there is similar in wording to the conclusion here to me. It seems the 6600 GT AGP is most definitely a good video card for the mass market :PChronoReverse - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
To #28A quote from HardOCP
"One thing is for sure, the GeForce 6600GT and the Radeon X700XT are very competitive products when it comes to overall gaming performance. If we had to edge out a card that offers up the better value we would have to lean towards the GeForce 6600GT at this point in time. In our two days of X700XT experience we saw it get held out of the top spot in terms of both framerate and image quality by the GeForce 6600GT. Keep in mind that the GeForce 6600 series also packs the performance potential of Shader Model 3.0 once games start using it."
Any nVidia bias you attribute to Anandtech is unfounded.
vailr - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Some AVSForum.com (/Home Theater Computers) postings had said that the 6600 video processor was fine; that only the 6800 (the AGP version specifically) had certain hardware problems, which "cannot be cured by a driver update". Or, that maybe some future Windows Media Player update would be needed, to enable hardware assisted .wmv files.So, general confusion, as to what the real facts are.
"nVidia admits 6800 has faulty on chip decoder":
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&a...