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nVidia GeForce 6600 GT AGP Performance Preview |
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Written by Mavke
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Wednesday, 17 November 2004 |
Also FiringSquad was up for a preview on the nVidia GeForce 6600 GT AGP graphics card. nVidia's high-end GeForce 6800 GT has won a loyal following among enthusiasts due to its compelling combination of price, features, and performance.
 nVidia GeForce 6600 GT AGP Performance Preview
The 6800 GT's formula is simple: take a 16-pipe GeForce 6800 Ultra and tone it down just a bit by clocking its core at 350MHz and pairing it with 256MB of GDDR3 memory operating at 500MHz (1.0GHz effective). These changes reduce the power requirements, allowing nVidia to use a smaller cooler that only requires a single slot, while 6800 GT cards themselves retail for $100 less than the 6800 Ultra at an MSRP of $400.
The end result is a product that delivers more than enough performance for today's latest games, with good visual quality and shader model 3.0 compliance for the next generation of DX9 games of tomorrow. But what if you don't have $400 to shell out for a graphics card? This is where nVidia's GeForce 6600 GT comes in.
The GeForce 6600 GT is based on the same fundamental technology as the GeForce 6800 GT, this includes nVidia's more powerful CineFX 3.0 shading engine, which features completely redesigned pixel and vertex shaders, support for shader model 3.0, UltraShadow II, and 64-bit texture filtering and blending. The only significant change is that the 6600 GT's core components have been sliced in half.
The 6600 GT sports half the number of pixel pipelines, sixteen in GeForce 6800 GT versus eight in the 6600 GT, half the vertex units (six in 6800 GT compared to three in 6600 GT), and a 128-bit memory interface that is powered by two 64-bit memory controllers, versus four 64-bit memory controllers in GeForce 6800 GT for a 256-bit interface. Fortunately, the 6600 GT's core components aren't the only aspects that have been halved; the 6600 GT's price tag is also sliced in two with an MSRP of $200.
Today's arrival of the GeForce 6600 GT AGP closes a huge gap in nVidia's product lineup for the AGP graphics market. Previously, GeForce FX 5900 XT was nVidia's mainstream solution of choice, but as performance with newer DX9 games such as Half-Life 2 VST and Far Cry showed us last summer, the 5900 XT was showing serious signs of age. Meanwhile, ATI slashed prices on their Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB, which now sells for about $200.
With its eight-pipeline architecture and 256-bit memory interface, the RADEON 9800 PRO delivers very good performance, trumping all previous mainstream solutions at the $200 price point. That is until the GeForce 6600 GT AGP arrived.
The GeForce 6600 GT doesn't boast a 256-bit memory interface, but thanks largely to its screaming 8 pipeline graphics core which operates at 500MHz, the GeForce 6600 GT was able to outperform the Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB in our testing, in fact the 6600 GT was actually more competitive with the Radeon 9800 XT, which is a 256MB graphics card that retailed for $500 this time last year. It's pretty remarkable to see how far the mainstream segment has come in such a short period of time.
But now the question everyone's wondering is when ATI will respond with an AGP variant of the X700 XT. Unfortunately, we can't answer that one, as ATI has been pretty mum about the topic since announcing the X700 family in September. We were initially under the impression the first cards would begin shipping around this timeframe, but based on all indications, it looks like ATI is still at least a few weeks out and probably won't have anything ready before the end of the month.
Meanwhile, nVidia's board partners are shipping their retail GeForce 6600 GT cards to retailers as we speak. The first batch of cards can already be purchased online from a handful of places, with availability expected to increase in the coming weeks.
With Half-Life 2's retail debut and the holiday shopping season upon us, the window of opportunity for ATI is quickly closing. Countless gamers are looking for an inexpensive graphics upgrade solution. As of right now, the $200 card of choice for these consumers is quite clear: nVidia's GeForce 6600 GT AGP!
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