Nvidia GeForce 6600GT
AGP graphics card review.
With
a great many people upgrading their graphics card with a more
expensive graphics card of the AGP standard as opposed to PCI
Express which means the added cost of a motherboard as well
Nvidia now release their AGP 6600GT graphics card.
ATI use different
GPUs while Nvidia use a bridge chip to go from as in this case
the GeForce 6600GT PCI Express card to GeForce 6600GT AGP graphics
card.
This Nvidia GeForce
6600GT is clocked at the same core clock speed as the PCI Express
version at 500MHz but its memory clock is slower at 900MHz compared
to 1GHz. There is also no SLI support either. The AGP also needs
an additional power connector because the AGP bus cannot supply
the amount of power needed by this 6600GT card.
The Nvidia GeForce
6600 & 6600GT graphics cards are based on the NV43 and made
using 110
nm process of approximately 146 million transistors and has
a similar architecture to the NV40 which drives the GeForce
6800 graphics card so the 3D features match those of the GeForce
6800 with DirectX
9 support and shader model 3.0, Rotated grid FSAA, Ultra Shadow
II & GDDR3 memory on the Nvidia GeForce 6600GT version.
Graphics
cards quick reference guide.
| |
GeForce
6600GT
AGP
|
GeForce
6600 & 6600GT PCI-E
|
|
|
| Manufacturing
process |
0.11
micron
|
0.11
micron
|
0.15
micron
|
0.13
micron low-k
|
| Chip
technology |
256-bit
|
256-bit
|
256-bit
|
256-bit
|
| Transistor
count |
146
million
|
146
million
|
107
million
|
?
|
| Core
clock speed. |
500MHz
|
300MHz
/ 500MHz GT
|
412MHz
|
500
/ 400MHz
|
| Memory
type |
GDDR1
/ GDDR3 GT
|
GDDR1
/ GDDR3 GT
|
?
|
?
|
| Memory
clock speed. |
450MHz
(DDR=900MHz)
|
500MHz
(DDR=1000MHz) GT
|
365MHz
(DDR=730MHz)
|
370MHz
(DDR=740MHz) / 300MHz (DDR=600MHz)
|
| Memory
Bus width |
128-bit
GDDR3
|
128-bit
GDDR3
|
256-bit
GDDR
|
128-bit
GDDR
|
| Memory
bandwidth. |
16.0GB/sec
|
14.4
& 16.0GB/sec
|
23.4GB/sec
|
11.8
& 9.6GB/sec
|
| Rendering
Pixel pipelines. |
8
|
8
|
8
|
?
|
| Texture
units per pipeline. |
1
|
1
|
1
|
?
|
| Textures
per Texture unit |
?
|
?
|
8
|
?
|
| Pixel
fill rate. |
2.0Gpixels/sec
|
1.6
& 2.0Gpixels/sec
|
3.1Gpixels/sec
|
2.0
& 1.6Gpixels/sec
|
| Vertex
shader units. |
3
|
3
|
4
|
?
|
| Colour
bits per channel |
10
|
10
|
10
|
10
|
| PCI
Express/AGP 4x/8X |
Yes
+ DX9
|
Yes
+ DX9
|
Yes
+ DX9
|
Yes
+ DX9
|
| Max
displays/Ramdacs |
2/2
|
2/2
|
2/2
|
2/2
|
Nvidia GeForce 6600
PCI Express graphics card.
The
Nvidia GeForce 6600GT AGP uses the same memory as the PCI
Express version so you have some overclocking room.
The card
comes fitted with dual DVI connectors and you will notice
that the graphics core & heatsink are rotated to make
room for the heatsink of the Bridge chip allowing everything
to fit on the PCB.
Nvidia GeForce 6600GT
PCI Express graphics card.
The
PCI Express version with VGA & DVI connectors and no
additional power connector.
Nvidia GeForce 6600GT
Ultra Shadow II.
This
Nvidia Ultra Shadow II technology is also available
with these 6600 graphics cards which enables Nvidia to have
the edge on ATI in Doom 3.
Inverse
Telecine & Motion Compensation.
For
producing better quality video playback pictures. Inverse
Telecine cleans up the blur in an image that is created
by motion in video playback making the scenes have sharper
and more defined edges.
Motion Compensation
is to improve the overall video image quality of curved lines
in a picture.
Nvidia GeForce 6600GT
AGP graphics card performance.
Our
simple graph shows the sort of performance you can expect using
an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ at resolution of 1024 x 768.
Nvidia GeForce
6600GT AGP graphics card thoughts.
The
Nvidia GeForce 6600GT AGP does very well overall compared to
competing cards. With its competitive selling price and with
no competition from ATI who are yet to launch their X700 XT
AGP graphics card the Nvidia GeForce 6600GT has the market to
itself.
So if you are
looking for a super Value-for-money AGP graphics card in the
mainstream performance market you cannot do much better than
to buy the Nvidia GeForce 6600GT.
The Radeon ATI
9800 Pro offers comparative performance in older games but is
unfortunately left behind in the latest games.
And it is always
worth shopping around for the best buys as well.
