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Overclocking

We weren't too sure about the overclocking on this card before we began. The small cooler did not look to promising and plus XFX already had a 50 MHz overclock on the card.

This little 6600 definitely gave us what we deserve though, as we reached 6600 GT speeds on the core - our card topped out at exactly 500 MHz! Everything was completely stable at this speed, and the chips cooler was just barely warm. We managed a still impressive 102 MHz overclock on the memory, but this is still 98 MHz short of 6600 GT speeds. Regardless, the fact that this card was able to reach near GT spec while still remaining cool and stable is amazing. Other sites seem to be posting similar results as well, affirming the fact that these chips are decent overclockers. Our overclocked card bumped our Half Life 2 scores by about 5 frames per second in filtering tests, and while not a huge number, is still interesting to note.

Conclusion

XFX have done an awesome job with the 6600 DDR2. For $100 this card performs almost as well as what cost $200 this same time last year. Take note that almost all 6600 GT's come with only 128 MB of RAM as well, versus the DDR2 which comes with 256 MB. The fact that XFX overclocks the card by 50 MHz and charges $20 less than Nvidia's MSRP and still packs in Far Cry is almost unbelievable. This is definitely a high value situation and it only gets better.

The cards overclocking is with out a doubt the cherry on top and makes the price all the more attractive. Though the card doesn't quite reach 6600 GT speeds, it comes extremely close, close enough to not be noticeable to the majority of gamers who will be buying this card. Then again, many of those same gamers are most likely never to bother with overclocking their card anyways.

This board ultimately fills out a very impressive holiday line up for Nvidia which represents one of the highest values in a while. This card while not worth the upgrade for most people running PCI-E, would have been a very nice upgrade for the many agp users still looking for something to upgrade to. It is unfortunate that this card does not have an agp accomplice, although the prices on many AGP 6600 GT's have fallen so low that that could make a nice alternative for a little more money.

As competition for ATI's X1300, this does extremely well. The card beats it in most benchmarks and overclocks well out of reach of the top model 1300. Nvidia have a very solid product with the 6600 DDR2, and XFX just makes the deal a little sweeter.