NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT: Bringing NV4x to the Masses
by Derek Wilson on September 7, 2004 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
It is clear that the 6600 GT hits a very sweet spot in the market. The card consistently performs on par with some of the lower end high end cards (6800 and X800 Pro) at lower resolutions below 1600x1200 without AA and AF enabled. This should be enough to sell any casual gamer on the card. Let alone the fact that even when AA and AF are turned on, the NV43 based GT is still a better option than the 5950 U and the 9800 XT in performance. Considering that these two previous gen cards go for at least $300 anywhere we could find them, this makes the 6600 GT a much better buy. On top of that, previous gen cards that go for $200 will be much less performing still. All this adds up to mean that even the hardcore gamer who just doesn't have $300 to $500 to spend will be very satisfied with a 6600 GT. If $200 is in the budget, and PCI Express is a necessity, the 6600 GT is absolutely the way to go.Unfortunately, at this point in time, those who want PCIe graphics are stuck buying only Intel based systems. AMD fairly consistently leads (in some cases utterly dominates) Intel in gaming performance. We are very reluctant to recommend building a PCI Express system intended for gaming until someone manages to launch a chipset with PCI Express support for AMD systems.
Hopefully, NVIDIA will crank out an AGP follow up their native PCIe solution at least as quickly as they did the reverse earlier this year.
Not wanting to let this review end on such a bittersweet note, we will say that we are very interested in getting down and dirty with some 6600 GT SLI benchmarks as soon as we can convince NVIDIA that they want to send us a connector. We have been very impressed with the 6600 GT, and we are excited about seeing what ATI has to offer for this market segment as well. With current generation coming to the mid range market segment, nobody looses.
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trenzterra - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Are you reviewing a 256mb or 128mb card? I can't imagine a 128mb card beating the hell out of X800 and even their 6800.coldpower27 - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
oops i mean it's probably for Socket 604 so they need 2 Xeons, preferably the Nocona's but they aren't LGA775 :Dcoldpower27 - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Yeh that would be possible in a way I believe,You can bench the Pentium 4 Prescott 3.4GHZ for i875P, with DDR400 2-2-2-5 for the AGP GPU.
Then you can bench the Prescott 3.4GHZ LGA775 on the i925X plaform with DDR2-533 4-4-4-12, for the PCI Express GPU that would be roughly equivalent.
Or you can supplement both with the Pentium 4 EE 3.4GHZ if you got both the S478 and LGA775 Edition of those two processors.
It's too bad you can't bench SLI, but it's hard to expect them to, they need Xeons on the Tumwater chipset:S and isn't that for LGA775 only too? So they need 2 Noconas???
JackHawksmoor - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Looks like a great card, but it looks like it's actually better than what they're showing here, since they're comparing it to weaker cards in systems with better CPUs...Really needs to be redone with everything but the video cards kept constant.
DEMO24 - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Why the heck is that card beating a 6800? Hopefully that 6800 will pull ahead more than that with newer drivers.Cygni - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
RTFABored Guy - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
anyone know if the 6600 gpu will be available in an agp interface anytime soon?8NP4iN - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
nice to see a 200$ card beating a 450$ 9800XT or 9800 pro...cant wait to upgrade when nforce4 comes out
Carfax - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
I was just wondering, because I know the 65.76 drivers would have raised the 6800 series performance aswell!ZobarStyl - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
The point of the article was to compare the PCI-E mid-range, and guess what, if the 6600GT is 200 bucks, it's direct price competition is the x600XT and it can't even hold a candle to the 6600GT. If they release the AGP version at 200 it still is a great competitor to the 9800pro from performance alone, plus the added feature set is a bonus. nV is definitely taking advantage of the complete lack of midrange from ATi.