NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT: Bringing NV4x to the Masses
by Derek Wilson on September 7, 2004 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Test
As of yet, ATI does not have a comparable part to the 6600 or the 6600 GT. They are working on bringing an R4xx based midrange chip out at some point in the future, but we haven't gotten any concrete details about possible parts yet. For this review, we took a look at the X600 XT as a comparison point, but as it turns out, this isn't as helpful as we had hoped. The major problem is that we wanted a good comparison with current and previous generation GPUs, and the only way we could effectively do that was by comparing AGP cards to these PCI Express solutions. As such, most of the numbers other than the 6600 GT and the X600 XT have been run on our 3400+ graphics system. The Doom 3 and Source Engine AGP benchmarks were run on the overclocked FX53, and so aren't as comparable to the rest of the world.But we feel that this is an acceptable setup in light of the fact that PCI Express systems will have to compete with AGP systems. Our graphics test platform is based on AMD, and this serves us well enough in simply comparing how well the 6600 does in modern games (which are mostly graphics limited anyway). As long as the processor is powerful enough to keep from becoming a large bottleneck we will have a clue about NV43 performance. And we feel we've accomplished this. Here's our test setup.
Performance Test Configuration |
|
Processor(s): |
AMD Athlon 64 3400+ |
RAM: |
2 x 512Mb OCZ 3500 Platinum Ltd (2:3: 2:10) |
Hard Drives |
Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer) |
Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers |
VIA Hyperion 4.51 |
Video Card(s): |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT |
Video Drivers: |
ATI Catalyst 4.6 |
Operating System(s): |
Windows XP Professional SP2 |
Motherboards: |
MSI MS-6702E (VIA K8T800 Pro Chipset) |
The 61.77 drivers were used on all but the 6600 GT, which was powered by the 65.37 beta drivers. On the ATI side, most of the numbers shown here were run with the 4.6 Catalyst, except the X600 XT which was run with the 4.8 version.
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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.