The Test

AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Dual Channel DIMMs 2-2-2-10
MSI K8N Neo2 nForce3 Motherboard
ATI Catalyst 4.11 Drivers
NVIDIA ForceWare 66.93 Drivers

Doom 3 Performance

Since even before its release Doom 3 has clearly been an NVIDIA selling point. It is built around OpenGL, and preliminary benchmarks showed NVIDIA hardware running Doom 3 faster than ATI a year before the game's release. The end product doesn't seem to have deviated from the initial track, and surely NVIDIA couldn't be happier. We see here that the 6600GT is outperforming ATI's 12 pipe x800 Pro part with the the 6800 GT setting the bar on performance very high.

Doom 3

Under Doom 3 the 6600GT is a very powerful midrange card. Our resolution scaling graph shows a card with a profile that exceeds that of the x800 Pro. All of the previous generation cards fall a good distance behind the top three contenders in this test.


When 4x AA is enabled under Doom 3, the 6600GT dips under the x800 Pro in resolution scaleing. The 6600GT is still a midrange card, and 4xAA at high resolutions is going to be easier to handle on the higher end x800. The 6600GT puts in a very good showing overall.


Head to Head: NVIDIA GeForce 5900XT vs. NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT Counterstrike: Source Visual Stress Test
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  • 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


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