Introduction

While the release of a new graphics architecture is always exciting, the reality is that few beyond the hardcore are jumping on the bandwagon right away. The average gamer is not going to be shelling out 4 or 500$ dollars for a video card. The popularity of the 5700 and 5900 series from Nvidia is a testament to this; they offered relatively good performance for a price that was a lot more palatable, the magic $200 mark. The NV4x series already has a tiered pricing system in place with the Ultra at $499, the GT at $399 and regular 6800 at $299 but none of them are at the $200 level yet but that is about to change.

Today at QuakeCon, Nvidia will announce its entry into the mainstream segment with two parts based on the NV4x architecture, the 6600 and the 6600GT. Code named NV43, the 6600 series will be the first mainstream parts derived from the NV40 architecture. Unlike the much maligned GF4MX series, the 6600 is a true NV4x part meaning that it is feature complete with the 6800 series. The differences come from the number of pipelines, memory and memory interface support.

Specifications

Unlike the ill-fated decision to go with a 0.13 micron process for the NV30, Nvidia seems to have had little trouble transitioning to a 110nm process. The clockspeed for the 6600GT is a whopping 500 mhz while the 6600 is much slower at 300mhz. Note that the transistor counts are still very high; while they are nowhere near the 220 million transistors for the 6800 series, it is still bigger than the 5950 and is just shy of being twice the size of Nvidia's last mainstream part in the 5700 series. Single texture fillrate is very impressive as even the slower 6600 has a higher theorectical single texture fillrate than the 5950. The 6600GT has fillrate exceeding that of the 6800. There have been rumors that the 6600GT will eventually replace the 6800 and 6800LE (not listed here, 8 pipe part) as the entire 6800 series are 220 million transistor parts that are quite costly to make whereas the reduced transistor count on the 6600s should bring costs down provided that the 110nm process is not costing Nvidia an arm and a leg.

NV40 die on the left, NV43 on the right. Notice the lower pin density of the NV43 GPU