XFX GeForce 6600 DDR2 Review - PAGE 1

Introduction

Today we bring you another card from the ongoing and oh-so-crowed low-midrange graphics scuffle. Up until this summer Nvidia was the undisputed victor at the 199 price point. Their 6600 series cards were fast, and dominated almost every comparable product from camp red. ATI's X300 on the low end was quite successful, but was matched quite easily by all comparable 6 series cards. In August, ATI began adding more cards into the mix in an effort to stop Nvidia dead in its tracks at the ~$150 price point. Their X800 GT has seen quite a bit of interest in the past few months, but it would appear as if Nvidia is coming back to undercut ATI's move once again.

Nvidia yesterday released its latest midrange competitor, the 6800 GS. This card goes head to head with the X800 GTO from ATI and at the same time, pushes current midrange cards into a place significantly lower than before. We now have a very appealing performance/price spread, that has evolved significantly from even 2 months ago. $210 can currently buy a 6800 GS (though this number should fall drastically within the coming months), $170 an X800 GTO card, ~$150 can fetch an X800 GT, and $140 can buy a 6600 GT.

Coming in at a suggested retail price of $120, the Geforce 6600 DDR2 looks to fill the gap nicely between the old 6600's and the 6600 GT. The new card boosts the core clock rate from the orginal 6600 by 50MHz, bringing the core to 350 MHz, and the memory by 300 MHz to 800 (effective of course). The new 6600 has 8 pipes and 3 vertex shaders like that of the older version, and sports 256 MB of memory over a 128 bit bus.

XFX has boosted the core clock on their card to 400 Mhz, matching the standar clock rates of the 2.5ns Infineon memory. This is an especially nice gesture considering that XFX have set an MSRP for their card that is $20 lower than what Nvidia planned! XFX should also have first availability of these cards as well.