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
Final Words
NVIDIA's 6600GT was a strong performer when it was released as a PCI Express solution, but now as an AGP card it is even stronger for two reasons:
1) The market for a $200 - $250 AGP card is currently much larger than the market for a PCI Express version of such a card, and
2) ATI will be very late to market with their X700 XT AGP, thus giving the 6600GT AGP a unique window of opportunity for the remainder of 2004.
Compared to the $200 - $300 AGP cards available today, the GeForce 6600GT AGP can't be beat. While the Radeon 9800 Pro offers close performance in older games, switch to any of the latest titles and the 6600GT truly spreads its wings.
The performance improvement the 6600GT offers over NVIDIA's older $200 price point card, the 5900XT, is nothing short of amazing. The performance comparisons we showed here today are a testament to how much NVIDIA has improved their core architecture since the days of NV3x, with the 6600GT completely demolishing the 5900XT in performance. Even the $400 5900 Ultra is outperformed by the 6600GT in almost all of the benchmarks.
NVIDIA didn't do anything that ATI couldn't have done with the 6600GT AGP, however it was NVIDIA's PCI Express to AGP bridge that they tested and validated several months ago that gave NVIDIA the time to market advantage over ATI.
For the first time in recent history our GPU recommendation is clear: the best bang for your AGP buck is none other than the GeForce 6600GT.
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Pete - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Great article, Anand. Are you sure about your 9700P numbers for Far Cry, though? They seem awfully low, especially in relation to a 5900XT.SlinkyDink - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
/*The AGP version of the 6600GT obviously lacks SLI support given that you can only have a single AGP slot on a motherboard.*/Actually I believe that AGP 3.0 specs allow up two AGP slots (and both could be used used at once), but nobody ever decided to implement it :P
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
I am not treating NVIDIA's Video Processor as a feature of any NV4x GPU until NVIDIA provides a working driver and commits to a public release date. The 6600GT AGP supposedly has the same video processor that the PCI Express version has (since they are the same GPU), but to this date NVIDIA has failed to deliver a working driver set to take advantage of it.Take care,
Anand
slurmsmackenzie - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
#28....remember, the point is that ati didn't have a bridge in the works at the release of the x700, so now that it has become apparent that agp is still the front running solution, they're behind it it's agp equivelant releases. so, as far as agp interface is concerned, the closest ati comparison is the 9800.
vailr - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Any comments on: comparing the hardware video decoding, of the 6600 vs. the (reportedly faulty)6800; and overall video quality, in comparison with ATI's offerings?For those people interested in the best cost-to-performance video solution, for Home Theater PC use.
Thanks.
Cybercat - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
They couldn't have been using the NF4 reference motherboard, these are all AGP cards. Also, why is it that the 9800 Pro does 63% better than the 9700 Pro in FarCry? At most that card is around 30% better. Did you guys really rerun the tests with the 9700 Pro using the latest drivers, or did you merely recycle some of the numbers?marcnakm - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
The card I was waiting for.Good review, just missing the comparison with the regular 6800 which is very important.
Regs - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
This review shows a lot of things. One of them was how the FX series was a horrible failure.draazeejs - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Did nVidia pay for this article? Is it really fair to put up this card against a 2-years old card, like R9800Pro? As far as I understood, the X700 should be the real competitor for 6600GT, because the X700 is supposed to be in the same price cathegory, no? There have been numerous reviews of the X700 on the net, why not include it here???Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 16, 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