Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT
Gaming benchmarks
Final Words
The examined Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT video card is one of the first signs of batch-produced boards built on the NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT chip and at its performance is a complete replica of NVIDIA's reference board except some external features like design of the cooling system and own blue color of textolyte. Also, note the use of already mentioned second revision NV43 offering reduced heat emission.
The added bonus of the solution which will appeal to gamers is the 3-CD special edition DOOM3 in the package bundle.
Since 6600GT was initially positioned as an ideal mainstream video card for DOOM3 (recall the motto the 6600Series presentation - "Play DOOM3 The Way It’s Meant To Be Played"), which is quite an expectable marketing move to make future buyers happy. Performance at DOOM3, as we found out during the tests, fully meets the promised.
But DOOM is not all. So, what did the card show in other gaming applications?
As was found out, Gigabyte's 6600GT is good not only for DOOM3. At Far Cry (ver 1.2) it also wins, leaving the rivals well behind starting with 1024х768 (just show me those who play FarCry in 640х480 :-)
Gigabyte 6600GT also demonstrated higher results as compared to its direct competitor - ATI X700 XT - at Gun Metal, as well as in the new 3DMark 2005. Along with that, 6600GT stands quite well at using the resolution in the demanding quality modes.
Nevertheless, we can't ascertain a one-one victory, because in the total we see a loose parity between the solutions (we did not consider TRAD since it has always been a bottleneck for NVIDIA cards, nor we tested DOOM3 with ATI cards), and the scale pan is changing to both sides from application to application.
From this viewpoint, comparative tests of various modifications of 6600GT promise to be very curious, which we'll present - starting with boards of 256 MB video memory up to specimens equipped with 1.6 ns access time memory.
As regards comparison of Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT to ATI X700 PRO, we can give a more certain answer - despite the 256Mb memory and 6 vertex pipelines being the trump of the latter, our heroine did a better job in most tests. But don't forget about the difference in frequencies - 500/1000 versus 425/860, so the result is expectable. If we compare the recommended prices for these two products - both at about $200 - the comparison is not in favor of the Canadian company. Clearly, 128 MB in 6600GT is again a marketing move to keep the price below $200, because varied solutions of partners with 256 MB memory will be definitely much higher.
In that sense, the position of ATI who presented its X700 XT and X700 PRO at the same recommended price $199 with the latter having frequencies pushed down versus the relatively higher-end model is not quite clear. As regards the comparison of 6600GT to both cards on the base of RV380 - X600XT and X600 PRO - there is nothing to compare. The X600 series will be able to survive only to the attractive price.
We are now not saying goodbye, and soon will present a few more quite interesting solutions on the base of GeForce 6600GT.
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