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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
66 Comments
View All Comments
Avalon - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Thank you for taking our concerns into consideration, Anand :)coldpower27 - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
That's intresting, how the 6800 GT dips like that in Sims 2 performance at 12x10, do you have any reason why? Even stranger still how the X800 Pro seems to be actually beating the 6800 GT in this particular game in high res. However it's FPS seems to be limited to 40FPS max across the board :S. Also could you possibly bench the Sims 2 under 1152x864, I would like to see what the performance of the 6800 GT is at that res for this game.Oh good review, would like a 300/700 6800 LE 8x1/4 and 325/700 6800 Vanilla 12x1/5 tested as well. To see how those compare to these cards,
ciwell - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Hmm...try to get the BFG OC one then...:D :D
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Thanks for the comments. We did not have a vanilla 6800 available for testing for this review, but as soon as we get one in we will make sure to include it in our upcoming reviews.Take care,
Anand
ciwell - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Yeah, I am wondering where the vanilla 6800 is too? It clearly is in direct competition with the 6600GT.ciwell - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
CU - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
I would also like to know why the 6800nu is not included. The message may not be so clear if the 6800nu was included.9700prolover - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
I love the last sentense. Even the writer of anandtech loves the "the message is clear, xxx wins/fails" style of conclusion.Avalon - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Where was the vanilla 6800? You can get a BFG 6800 OC at Outpost for $249.99, and it's in stock at this moment. I recall the 6800 beating the 6600GT in 60% of benchmarks, while losing out in 40% of benchmarks. If the 6600GT is going to cost $225, that won't be much fun. I'd rather take the BFG 6800 and unlock the pipes and vertex shaders, artifact permitting.Decoder - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
What about the video decoding issues on the NVidia chips? Has that been resolved?http://techreport.com/ja.zz?comments=7535