Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT
Introduction
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Gigabyte GeForce 6600 GT
|
| GPU chip |
GPU NV43 (0.11) |
| Memory |
128Mb GDDR3; 128Bit;
Samsung 2.0 ns |
| Frequencies: |
500MHz/1000MHz DDR |
| Bus: |
PCI-Express x16 |
| Category: |
Middle PCI-E |
| Price: |
$220 |
Three months ago, on 12 September, NVIDIA presented two new solutions of the GeForce 6 Series - GeForce 6600GT and GeForce 6600. To date, most partners of the company have already announced their own products based on these chips. Since 6600GT and 6600 originally positioned as mainstream solutions, the manufacturers are absolutely free at increasing the clock speeds (a salute to Gainward and its solutions on the base of 6600GT, which you will soon come across in one of our forthcoming materials), at fitting faster memory, additional power connector, and other modifications, starting with the simplest - the cooling system.
All in all, again the troublous times of mix-up and total chaos are coming back: there are not so many chips, but based on them an awful lot of products of absolutely different specifications have been created, which are so difficult to make head or tail. Well, let's be the first on the front of the battleground and try to put the process as simple as we can.
Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT
To begin with, some lead-in.
To date, there exist six types of PCI-E video cards for the Middle-end sector of video accelerators. From ATI's part, these are X700XT/Pro and X600XT/Pro, with NVIDIA radiant for its GeForce 6600GT/6600. Officially, one more X700 without any suffixes has been announced, but nobody is still producing it - looks like ATI has brought the project to a standstill. All these six existing solutions in their classical form took part in today's tests - we'll be progressing from the simple to the complex, leaving any nonstandard products based on the above chips until later.
With the release of X700 and GeForce6600, the NVIDIA PCX 5900 at performance gradually moved to the low-end sector. At 3DMark2005, PCX 5900 lags behind ATI X600 Pro by 35% and was ruled out of today's tests. That's a knock-out, isn't it?
But despite the so cruel "natural selection", it should be noted that the major heroine of today's material has its own peculiarities - it is based on NV43 chip but already of revision (A2). By the way, any changes to the lithographic production cost to the customer as much as one million dollars. At least, this is the amount of levy that TSMC charges ATI when the latter submits documentation for a new version of already launched high-end chip. And how much it is to set up a batch production of an entirely new chip is covered with mystery. Evidently, much more than that. Anyway drug barons in Latin America would bite elbows in envy on knowing the true figures. But, let's come back to the subject.
Definitely, such high expenses bring hefty profits. For example, use of the second revision with reduced heat emission allowed Gigabyte to fit a regular aluminum radiator and be happy - the card offers fantastic overclocking potentials in this make even without using costly copper. Now let's recall the brief specifications of the cards that participate in today's tests.
| Video cards |
Chip |
Core/Mem |
Mem type |
PC/VC |
Interface |
| Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT |
NV43 |
500/1000 DDR3 |
128-bit 2 ns |
8/3 |
PCI-Express x16 |
| Leadtek GeForce 6600 |
NV43 |
300/500 DDR |
128-bit 2 ns |
8/3 |
PCI-Express x16 |
| ATI Reference RX700XT |
RV410 |
475/1050 DDR3 |
128-bit 2 ns |
8/6 |
PCI-Express x16 |
| ATI Reference RX700 PRO |
RV410 |
425/860 DDR3 |
128-bit 2 ns |
8/6 |
PCI-Express x16 |
| MSI RX600 XT |
RV380 |
500/760 DDR |
128-bit 2.5 ns |
4х1 |
PCI-Express x16 |
| GeCube RX600 PRO |
RV380 |
400/600 DDR |
128-bit 2.5ns |
4х1 |
PCI-Express x16 |
Having done with formalities, now let's get round straight to examining the card.
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