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Overclocking

The reference 500 MHz of the 6600 GT core seems to be all that it can take. Using PowerStrip, we only managed to overclock the 3D1 cores a measly 8 MHz before a loop of 3DMark 2005 brought the computer to its knees. Memory faired a little better, allowing itself to be raised to 1170 MHz before we noticed artifacts in games. Stock speeds for the 3D1 were 500/1120 MHz, our highest stable overclock was 508/1170 MHz.

We have yet to try to overclock our reference 6800 GTs, and as such, we cannot be sure whether the speeds attained are the maximum that the 3D1 hardware can take, or whether SLI just doesn't take well to overclocking. When we get around to fiddling with the 6800 GTs, we'll update this review with some information.

Conclusion

Gigabyte has done a tremendous job with the 3D1: it is fast, it is stable, and its price/performance ratio is second to none when bundled with Gigabyte's new motherboard. The GA-K8NXP-SLI motherboard and 3D1 video card bundle will, as we mentioned earlier, retail for $550 MSRP. Considering that ATI's flagship X850 XT PE costs as much, this bundle ought to be a steal. In some cases, the 3D1 is faster than the X850 XT PE as well as NVIDIA's 6800 GT, though it seems to fall short in a number of benchmarks (Jedi Knight 2 and Splinter Cell immediately come to mind). Perhaps improvements will come with future BIOS updates and/or Forceware optimizations.

Two regular 6600 GTs and an SLI motherboard would run you about $600 USD, using the general ballpark figure of $200 for each product. Gigabyte's bundle already has an advantage here, but throwing in the price of a single ATI X850 XT PE and nForce 4 motherboard really puts things in perspective. The current MSRP of $550 for the X850 and about $150 for said motherboard comes to a total of $700. Another way of putting it is this: $550 will get you one X850, or get you the excellently-performing 3D1, and a fully-featured, SLI-capable nForce 4 motherboard. Regardless of the way you want to interpret it, this is real value here.

Not once during testing did we have stability problems with the 3D1 - it was rock solid regardless of what we threw at it. At first, we had slight issues with enabling SLI as we talked about before, and it wasn't too clear as to what was causing it. A completely fresh driver install and reboot fixed everything, allowing us to use the dual GPUs. There were a few anomalistic results that we might investigate further, such as the poor performance exhibited by the 3D1 in Half-Life 2 when 8x AF was enabled and non-AA/AF performance in Jedi Knight 2 compared to the regular 6600 GT.

In general, the 3D1 is an innovative and speedy little demon. Subjective observations place its heat output more or less on par with a 6800 Ultra, and power draw ought to be more or less the same as well. The only knock against the 3D1 is ironically enough, the inability to SLI - as far as upgrades go it is no different than a traditional video card. A single 6800GT will have more flexibility for a future upgrade but again, will cost more. The real question though is what kind of user you are - will you be throwing money down in a few mere months or is this a keeper for years? If it's the latter I do not think that SLI should be a consideration in the purchase decision.

While overclocking results weren't too impressive, we never expected the 3D1 to have much overclocking head room. The 3D1 can put out some serious frames at non-AA/AF settings, as well as some impressive performance with AA/AF in many games. If you want to be gaming at 1600x1200 with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, you probably shouldn't be looking at a 6600 GT-based solution anyway. Otherwise, the 3D1 will show you what gaming is all about.

Good job, Gigabyte.

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