NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT Roundup. Round II: AGP
Part I. GeForce 6600GT in the make of Gigabyte, Galaxy, and Leadtek
Continued from NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT Roundup. Round 1: PCI-E
We are reviewing three cards based on the AGP GeForce 6600GT chip. We are not going deep into verbose reasoning and marketing research but get down straight to business especially because the topic of performance comparisons for AGP solutions in the mainstream sector (>200$) is currently more than urgent.
Indeed, despite the abundance of reviews on PCI-E video cards "ready made to any taste, color, and wallet", the real percentage of owners of PCI-E systems is minor to date. For instance, just look at the "Your video card" voting (i.e. the card currently installed in your system) to see that merely 5.8% (!) of readers voted the PCI-Express.
That's understandable and natural. That's just the very beginning of the hopefully triumphant path of the PCI-E. Some day it will win the hearts and systems of consumers, but not right now. But now let's answer the "question of the day" which is being discussed quite lively these days in all conferences - "which is best to choose - 6600GT, 9800 PRO, or 6800LE?!".
A few remarks regarding the latter. While benchmarking, we tried to do what the card is actually purchased for - to unlock the pipelines which are there as many as 8x1/4 VP. The operation proved "almost successful" - the card was running trouble-free with the enabled 12x1/6 VP, which added a fantastic performance boost.
Certainly, we'll show you the results for 6800LE produced before unlocking the pipelines and after, in order to make the comparison most indicative.
But these are "battles" between video cards of the same pack. As the contender to them we'll be using the well-known Radeon 9800 PRO.
There is another spice to mention - all the three video cards based on the 6600GT core offer different nominal core/memory frequencies - from 500/900 in Leadtek's product to more attractive 500/1000 in Gigabyte's 6600GT, and the most trendy 525/1050 in Galaxy's nonstandard solution.
We were not content with benchmarking at merely nominal frequencies, and investigated the overclocking capabilities for each of the cards. We are finishing the foreword at this optimistic note and get down to in-depth examination of all today's "guinea pigs".
 |
Content: |
 |
|
|
Top Stories: |
|
 |
|
MoBo:
|
|
|
|
VGA Card:
|
|
|
|
CPU & Memory:
|
|
|
