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nVidia GeForce 6600GT AGP - Finally! |
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Written by Mavke
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Wednesday, 17 November 2004 |
Also PC Perspective has
published their review on the nVidia GeForce
6600GT AGP. Readers have been asking for the release of an AGP version of
the nVidia 6600GT GPU since
its initial release in PCI Express format. Today nVidia is releasing just that: a $200-250 video card with
great performance for the AGP market.
 nVidia GeForce
6600GT AGP - Finally!
Our benchmarks showed that the nVidia 6600GT GPU is indeed an excellent performer when
compared to other cards of a similar price range. When we first looked at the
PCIe version of this chip, the best competition we had to compare to was the
X600 card from ATI which, to put
it nicely, did very poorly in the gaming arena. ATI quickly responded with the X700 core that improved
performance quiet a bit and put them in contention with the 6600GT for the mid
range PCIe market.
For the AGP market, at the $200-250 price range, the
9800 Pro card from ATI just isn't
enough to keep up with the nVidia 6600GT in the majority of our testing. The only game
that showed a lot of potential for the Radeon 9800 Pro was Madden 2005,
in which ATI kept a much higher
minimum FPS mark. Of our other tests: Doom 3, Far
Cry 1.3, Battlefield: Vietnam and Rome: Total War, the nVidia 6600GT won them all but the Battlefield:
Vietnam game, where both cards were essentially tied.
Until ATI can come up with something to
compete against the 6600GT in this market, choosing the 6600GT AGP is going to
be an easy decision.
Our IQ testing proved that the anti-aliasing quality
of ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro card
wasn't quite up to the standards that the 6600GT had been developed for. After
all, the 6600GT is based around technology of the current nVidia flagship line, but the
9800 Pro is last years technology. The differences weren't huge, but they were
noticeable.
As for anisotropic filtering, both cards did very well and I
really couldn't find any differences in their quality levels during in game
play.
The fact that I (and our readers) were desperately looking for this
card goes to show that the PCI Express pick up on the market has been slow. Of
course, the AMD market didn't get
PCIe until the past 30 days, and its still not available for sale, so we can't
judge completely yet. But there are millions of users with AGP motherboards, and
I doubt that more than a few percent will be getting PCIe systems within the
next few months, so AGP cards will still have a big market.
It's
interesting to see the first use of nVidia's HSI chip to move from PCIe to AGP. When nVidia's first PCIe cards were
coming out, ATI bashed them for
not having native PCIe support, but now it seems that nVidia's HSI work is paying off,
allowing them to easily move from PCIe to AGP and vise versa. If ATI had a chip like this, we'd have
X700 AGP cards out here as well. In retrospect, this first generation of PCIe
cards from nVidia (excluding
the 6600) that are being attacked by ATI are going to matter only slightly as the increase of PCIe
upgrades will surely happen after both nVidia and ATI
have refreshes of their cores, which will be native PCIe from both camps.
With the announcement and release of three different AMD-based
PCIe chipsets, you may be asking if maybe this 6600GT AGP card is too late. I don't think so, there is still going to be a lot of people looking for a $200 video card that doesn't require a $200 motherboard and $200 processor
purchase to make the upgrade work. With Half-Life 2 being released today, gamers are again going to find their systems aren't quite what they want, and are going to be reading articles like this one to find the quickest and cheapest way to upgrade. The 6600GT AGP is just that.
Any gamers with Athlon XP or early 64 systems that just don't want to spend the money for a platform upgrade, but still need increased performance in the recent games should look at the 6600GT as an option for $250 or
under.
The nVidia 6600GT AGP card is a great piece of hardware: low cost and high performance. Any users that are looking for a low cost graphics card upgrade for Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Everquest II or countless other games,
find the first 6600GT AGP you can! The only mistake that nVidia might have made is not releasing this card with the initial 6600GT hype, as now that users
have seen AMD-based PCIe systems, they may decide to wait and upgrade that route - and that means that they could choose to not use an nVidia graphics card. Of course, there's that whole SLI thing, but is anyone really
interested in that?
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ASUS 9800GTX+ (DK) PCIe 512MB - Rev 01
