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Round Up and Comparison of GeForce 6600 series graphics cards

PCI Express x16 graphics cards
Chipset GeForce 6600 128 MB, 128 bit

After the fiasco that was GeForceFX, NVIDIA fought tooth and nail to get the performance crown back from ATI. The results of that effort is the GeForce 6, which succeeded in wrestling back the market share they've lost. The biggest dent is made by the GeForce 6600 series, which includes the GeForce 6600 and 6600GT. These cards quickly propagated through the mainstream market, offering improved shader performance at very affordable prices, not to mention scalability using SLI technology. Today, we tested boards from four different manufacturers, in alphabetical order they are the ASUS EN6600 GT TD 128, Chaintech SE6600G 128, Gigabyte 6600GT and the MSI NX6600 VTD128R.

Overview

Except for the MSI NX6600 VTD128R, the cards are pretty much the same. All GeForce 6600GTs don't have video input, though they are equipped with an SLI connector. The GeForce 6600 features video input at the cost of SLI, not to mention slightly slower performance due to lower core and memory clock. Before discussing benchmark results, we'd like to share our thoughts and notes on each card.

ASUS EN6600 GT TD 128
500/500 MHz

NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT 128 MB DDR3
Core Clock : 500 MHz
Memory Clock : 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR3)

Overall Score: 72.5 points



The ASUS EN6600 GT TD 128 comes with a very sparse bundle: the must have DVI to analog, a TV output with S-video to composite / RCA cable and a drivers / utilities CD. A very brief and relatively unhelpful, quick setup guide is also included. Most of the important information is inside the manual, which you can find in the second CD in PDF format. Unfortunately, ASUS didn't supply the needed Adobe Acrobat software, so you'll have to get them yourself. It would have been better to have them in print, since you can still read them if you're stuck without a working PC. Inside the bonus CD holder, you'll find ASUS DVD for DVD playback and Cyberlink PowerDirector to edit videos. A game is also included: Novalogic's Joint Operations. There's no HDTV dongle, something you usually can find with all GeForce 6600GT cards.



In the drivers CD, you'll find some utilities, but you probably want to skip them except the SmartDoctor. The others (VideoSecurity, GameFace Live) are only useful if you have video input, which the card does not have. Unlike with their ATI series of graphics cards, the SmartDoctor utility doesn't really do much – it can only change the core and memory clock. Too bad. Looks like we'll have to settle for basic hardware monitoring standard to all NVIDIA's cards.

Looks like everyone is sticking to reference board design these days. Even the cooling solution isn't that much different, except for the transparent plastic and the ASUS logo. Since it's based on the reference cooling solution, there's no finger guard on the fan. The memory is cooled with passive heatsinks separated from the active heatsink used to cool the graphics chip. Thermal paste is used on the chip while thermal adhesive is used on the memory chips.

Chaintech SE6600G 128
500/500 MHz

NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT 128 MB DDR3
Core Clock : 500 MHz
Memory Clock : 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR3)

Overall Score: 80 points



As hardware goes, the Chaintech SE6600G 128 includes everything you can find in any GeForce 6600GT bundle: the obligatory DVI to analog dongle, an HDTV / S-Video output dongle plus extension S-Video cable. A manual is also included, covering the essential hardware and software installation.

One of the most obvious difference with Chaintech SE6600G 128's bundle is that it doesn't include a game. Well, not the full version: there's a CD containing several demos. Thankfully, the bundled apps are not demos – its the WinCinema suite from Intervideo. It includes WinDVD for software playback, WinDVD Creator for video editing and WinRip for ripping DVDs.

Chaintech also used the reference design, even right to the cooling solution, so there's no finger guard on the fan. Separate, passive heatsinks are used to cool the memory chips. Fortunately, Chaintech has the right mind to put a hole on the top side of graphics chip's heatsink: this will help move air on to the memory heatsinks. One thing to note, looks like this card might have been 'prepared' for review. When we opened the chip's heatsink, there's a lot of thermal paste covering the chip, even to the point of being 'messy'. Thankfully its just ordinary thermal paste, not something potentially conductive. Just like every other cards using reference design, thermal adhesive was used for sticking heatsinks to the memory chips.

Gigabyte 6600GT
500/500 MHz

NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT 128 MB DDR3
Core Clock : 500 MHz
Memory Clock : 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR3)

Overall Score: 75 points



Keeping with the trend, Gigabyte 6600GT is also based on the reference design of GeForce 6600GT. So, you could expect all the features to be the same and located in the same place. This includes the obvious accessories such as DVI to analog dongle plus the HDTV dongle. No extension cable though, so make sure you have a long enough cable to hook it up to your HDTV set.



Gigabyte bundles two games with this card: Thief: Deadly Shadows from Ion Storm and Joint Operations from Novalogic. For DVD playback, there's Cyberlink PowerDVD in the drivers and utilities CD. You'll also find Gigabyte's own VTuner utility. Alas, again there's no hardware monitoring available on the utility. The only options available are core and memory clock adjustments and profile support. You'll have to rely on basic hardware monitoring built into NVIDIA's Forceware drivers.

Unlike the other GeForce 6600GTs, Gigabyte didn't use heatsinks on the memory chips. So, these chips get pretty hot when the card's in use. Thankfully, the memory chips can handle it just fine, but for safety reasons we recommend at least blowing cool air on them. The chip's heatsink only flows the air in one direction, so the memory chips on the top doesn't get any moving air. Gigabyte did put finger guard on the heatsink, something the other card makers should have done. With thermal paste helping heat transfer, the graphics chip will stay cool.

MSI NX6600 VTD128R
400/400 MHz

NVIDIA GeForce 6600 128 MB DDR3
Core Clock : 400 MHz
Memory Clock : 400 MHz (800 MHz DDR3)

Overall Score: 77.5 points



The only non GT card in this round up, the MSI NX6600 VTD128R runs 100 MHz slower. It also doesn't have the SLI connector, instead opting to offer video input. This card is probably more targeted for the all around gamer, who likes to do some video capturing on the side. Included in the bundle are DVI to analog dongle and video input / output dongle complete with HDTV connectors. To make the most use of its video input capabilities, MSI includes the Cyberlink Multimedia Pack, comprising of PowerDVD DVD playback software, PowerDirector to edit and capture video plus several others apps, which includes PowerGo DVD burning / mastering software. There's also Restore It! and Virtual Drive from Farstone. Last, but not least, there's the game Ground Control 2 from Massive Entertainment.



MSI used the same, single cooling design for both the X700 and GeForce 6600 cards. The heatsink cools both the chip and the memory chips, with thermal paste on the chip and the memory chips to provide better heat transfer. There's no finger guard on the fan, so again be careful no to touch or press on the fan while installing it.

Performance

With all these cards sticking to reference design (except for the MSI NX6600 VTD128R, since its a GeForce 6600), they offer roughly the same level of performance. The GT cards are using 500 MHz for the core and 500 MHz DDR for the memory, while MSI NX6600 VTD128R uses 400 MHz. All cards comes with 128 MB memory.

We didn't experience any crash or artifacts with any of the cards. Installation was smooth as you can get. Before looking at the test results, we encourage you to read our 'How We Evaluate' article so you understand how we conduct our test and benchmarks. More importantly, you will also see how each benchmarks react with our test setup. We only put the average, minimum and maximum fps in this evaluation to keep it brief, excluding the per second fps progress graph.

Our test setup
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 'Newcastle' socket 939
2 x 256 MB Kingston KVR 3-3-3 PC3200 DDR-SDRAM
MSI K8N NForce 4 SLI motherboard
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9 80 GBs Serial ATA 8 MB buffer
ASUS E-616 DVD-ROM
450 watts ATX power supply

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed
NVIDIA Forceware 71.22 & 66.81 reference driver
NVIDIA NForce system driver version 5.1 (motherboard supplied driver)
Creative SoundBlaster Live! 24 bit integrated (motherboard supplied driver)
DirectX 9.0c
all respected games used for benchmarks have been updated to their latest, final builds.

The results:

We see the GT's bunching up here, the performance within a hair of each other. Not surprising, since they're all using the same core and memory clock. As to be expected, the MSI NX6600 VTD128R is slower (about 10 to 20 %), particularly when we push the card to its limits with AA and AF. Even so, it still manage a respectable average 64.3 fps on 1600 x 1200, 32 bit with 4x AA and 16 AF.


This demo uses lots of shaders, so the test results serves as a good indicator of a graphics card's shader power. Of course, with shaders, higher clock does offer an advantage. So, it's not a surprise the MSI NX6600 is struggling a little bit here - remember it is running 100 MHz or 1/5th slower than the other cards. As a general note, the cards are more suited for playing at 1024 x 768, 32 bit with AF.


Looks like the default driver we're using (Forceware 71.22) was causing a slowdown in this game, a bug related to how the game render shadows. So, we scale back to an older driver (Forceware 66.81), just for this game. The score should represent what the game should run like sans bug3 This does not invalidates the test, since the same drivers are used with every card and these cards render using the same settings and path. As you can see, you can basically use each card and still have fluid frame rates with AA and AF up to 1280 x 1024, 32 bit. Higher resolutions are not recommended, even for the GTs, with minimum frame rates dropping below 30 fps.


We close the tests with with Nascar. Here, we're seeing relatively the same level of performance on all resolution except 1600 x 1200, 32 bit with AA and AF enabled. Being slower than the other cards, MSI NX6600 VTD128R is just barely holding on the 30 fps mark, around 16 to 25 % slower there. None of these cards can reach an average 60 fps with this game.

Conclusion:

From the benchmark results, it looks like all GeForce 6600 cards are more than enough to play games at 1024 x 768, 32 bit, with AA and AF. We also see that the GeForce 6600 is very sensitive to speed: a 100 MHz difference between the standard 6600 and the 6600GT can cause significant performance difference (at least 10 to 25 % on higher resolutions). The difference is more pronounced on shader heavy games (like Splinter Cell). But if you mainly play at 1024 x 768, 32 bit, there's really very little difference.

With this in mind, gamers looking for a high performing NVIDIA card will likely be more happy with a GeForce 6600 GT. They will have both performance and scalability. Granted, you can probably still overclock the GeForce 6600 to 6600GT levels, claiming back some of the lost performance, but you still can't use it in an SLI setup. This is the cost of having video input. In the end, the choice is yours whether you prefer video or performance.

Since the performance is generally the same for all GeForce 6600GT, features and bundle will be the determining factor. From the bundle perspective, the Chaintech SE6600G 128 gets the most points. It has the standard accessories, ie. retaining the HDTV dongle, heatsinks on the memory. True, there's no full version games bundled with the card, but getting a game is easier than getting an HDTV dongle or getting and putting heatsinks on the memory yourself, especially if you're not technically inclined. The only true competitor to Chaintech SE6600G 128 is the MSI NX6600 VTD128R, with video input, a full version game and lots of apps. Unfortunately, due to its slower clock, it lacks performance. It's fast enough with older games. In fact, nearly identical to the 100 MHz faster GTs, but with shader heavy games, even without AA and AF, you'll get 25% less performance. An upside for video enthusiast will be the hardware encoder, 'Pure Video' that's built into the chip. This should make capturing less heavy on the processor. It's up to you to decide whether or not that's worth the 25 % performance difference.

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