Introduction

Today, we'll be covering the performance of 11 different vendor's versions of the Geforce 6600GT. When that many of the same part get into the same room at the same time, you know that we're going to have a good cross-section of what the market should look like. If you're interested in buying a 6600GT, then this is the article for you.

Not only will we see what all these different vendors have to offer to you as a customer, but we will really see how hard the NV43 can be pushed, pulled, and stretched when it hits your system. We don't usually like to test overclocking on a large scale with the engineering sample parts that NVIDIA and ATI send us just after a product launch. These test samples are often just strung together by the skin of their IHV's proverbial teeth. It's not uncommon to see wires, resistors, and capacitors soldered onto an early PCB. We're actually lucky that these things work at all in some cases. We received an overclocked 6800 Ultra Extreme from NVIDIA that never booted, as well as an NV41 that was DOA. These preproduction boards are not the kind of boards that we would actually buy and use in our home systems.

And so, when an incredible number of vendors responded to our call for parts, we were very happy. Shipping parts means that we have what the end user will have. Heat tests, noise tests, overclocking tests - they all become very relevant and interesting. We will be looking at which vendors offer the best products to the consumer. Cards will be judged based on their idle and load thermal diode temperatures, the sound pressure level in dB of the system at a one meter distance, overclockability, features, bundle, and price.

We do spend a lot of time looking at the benchmarks of these cards at overclocked speeds, but these benchmarks aren't the "be all, end all" judge of what vendor makes a better card. First of all, the potential of any given ASIC to achieve a certain overclock is not something over which a vendor can have any power, unless they bin their chips and sell a special line of overclocker friendly cards (or, more likely, pre-overclocked cards). None of these 6600GTs fall into that category. This means that our BrandX card running at a certain speed doesn't guarantee anything about yours.

Overclocking tests are still important, as they assure that the cards which do achieve a high stable clock are able to support a GPU that is capable of running at a high speed. Some boards are not. It's just more of an art than a science sometimes and these numbers shouldn't be used as an absolute metric.

Heat management is especially important when overclocking. With a new breed of game on store shelves, such as Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and the onslaught of titles that will surely be based on their engines, GPU temperatures have no where to go but up. Increasing the core clock speed will help performance, but in our tests, it also raised maximum load temperature by a degree or two. The more a graphics card maker can do to keep heat down, the better. And that will be especially tricky with these cards once they've been in end users' hands for a while. Allow me to explain.

The way that the cooling solution attaches to NVIDIA's reference design is with 2 holes. Basically, the popular rectangular heatsink design is positioned precariously on top of the GPU and can pivot easily around the ASIC. This means: don't touch the heatsink. This really causes problems in situations where the thermal tape or glue is used. The kind of fulcrum that the NVIDIA reference design created is beyond powerful enough to tear through tape and snap the strongest glue without a second thought. Once those seals have been broken, cooling is severely compromised. Looking back at our numbers, this may be the reason why we see some of the extreme temperature numbers that we do. Of course, we were extraordinarily careful to avoid touching any HSFs after we realized what was going on.

Overclocking our Geforce 6600GTs
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  • geogecko - Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - link

    Well, two e-mails later to XFX, without an answer to my questions, and now I see this PNY PCI-E card with dual dvi and hdtv out pod...guess who's going to get my money?
  • Beatnik - Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - link


    Two links of interest:

    http://www.xfxforce.com/pinetechnotes/Fan%20Update...

    http://www.pny.com/products/verto/performance/6600...

    Nice article folks!
  • Beatnik - Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - link


    Seems pretty clear that a lot of people are waiting on their next upgrade, hence the continued heavy AGP interest. w.r.t. the XFX, it looks like they have a online store, and now have a pretty cool looking heatsink on the AGP card:
    http://www.xfxforce.com/pinetechnotes/Fan%20Update...

    The PNY 6600GT AGP product looks interesting also: http://www.pny.com/products/verto/performance/6600...
    Might be the only DVI+DVI+component video out.
    (Outstanding article guys!)
  • Rekonn - Monday, December 27, 2004 - link

    I too would really like to see a roundup like this one done for 6600GT AGP cards.
  • zoros - Sunday, December 26, 2004 - link

    Anyone know how well PNY 6600GT is doing in there tests.. I have tried to find information everywhere, but with no sucess.. :-(
  • geogecko - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link

    I agree. PC's have started to move into the home theater more than ever now, and people (me included) are reading your articles to obtain knowledge when building home theater PC's. This information is not there, and thus still leaves me in the dark as to which video card to purchase for my HTPC.

    No word from XFX on their HDTV Output compatibility, so I must assume they don't support it, which stinks, considering they have the only card with dual DVI connectors, and a decent HSF design.

    I realize this was a quick review, but video cards are now being required to have HD compatibility since so many people are interested in HTPC's these days. No one wants a DVR that forces advertising on them when they fast forward past commercials...so why not build a DVR that does more than TiVo intead...

    How about an update with HDTV Output compatibility, along with who includes the cables?
  • nvdm24 - Sunday, December 19, 2004 - link

    How much longer will us readers allow these ridiculous reviews to go on? Many of the readers of these tech sites want to know the FULL capabilities of these cards, not just how they run doom 3 and other 3d games. Sadly, reviewers at anandtech and every other tech site ignore the VIDEO capabilities of VIDEO cards. Even this review of the new 6600 agp ignores the video aspect of the 6600, despite the problems of the 6800, that weren't discovered by any reviewer, since none of them tested it for video. Not testing the video aspect does a HUGE disservice to readers. It's quite simple, just test a dvd movie and make sure the video aspect works and let readers know. If you feel particularly energetic, you could also test how fast it renders home movies, etc. You may think this is the job of a VIDEO site or PC site, but you are a PC site, a tech site. You would be surprised at the people who read your reviews. Others are going to start doing the job better, thus pull away readers if you don't get it together.
  • ChineseDemocracyGNR - Friday, December 17, 2004 - link

    Hi Derek,

    any word from the manufactures that had problems, are they sending you new cards?

    I was reading some user reviews for the MSI 6600GT _AGP_ at gameve.com and it also has heating problems, which is disapointing. Do you plan a similar article on the 6600GT AGP cards?
  • 1q3er5 - Friday, December 17, 2004 - link

    ouch u got me good there :( im never posting again :o lol
  • DerekWilson - Friday, December 17, 2004 - link

    #54 We scored cards more on construction, cooling, and noise, rather than on overclockability. thus the Albatron didn't get an award.

    Also, the leadtek card you liked to is the AGP version. We tested PCI Express parts only. The heatsink you mention is not cooling RAM, but the HSI (PCIe to AGP bridge).

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