Gigabyte GV-NX66T128D 6600GT Review - PAGE 3

NV40 and NV43 Technology

We encourage readers who are unfamiliar with NVIDIA's GeForce 6 family to take a look at our previous coverage of the technology behind the NV40 and also some specific details about the NV43 (6600 series).

The principle differences between the 6800 series and the 6600 series are the following

a) the number of pixel pipelines, 16 or 12 in the 6800 family as compared to 8 on the 6600
b) Vertex Pipelines, 6 on the 6800 series, 3 on the 6600 series,
c) Memory interface 256-bit on the 6800s and 128-bit on the 6600.

SLI is one of the big features of the GeForce 6 family and it is present on the Gigabyte GV-NX66T128D - officially the word is that you will need two of the same cards from the same manufacturer. Check out our in-depth look at SLI. The SLI bridge piece will be provided by the motherboard manufacturer as there is enough tolerance in the SLI specifications to allow for enough spacing variations between different motherboards to make it impractical for NVIDIA and their add-in card partners to provide the piece themselves.

Benchmark Setup

Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz (LGA-775)
Soltek SL-915GPro-FGR (Intel 915G)
1024MB OCZ PC3200
Western Digital WD1200 IDE HD
ATI X600 Reference Card ATI CATALYST 4.08
PowerColor X700 Pro ATI CATALYST 4.11 Beta
NVIDIA 6600GT Reference Card ForceWare 65.73

Drivers

We confirmed that the Gigabyte's 6600GT performed identically to the 6600GT PCIe reference card after running a few benchmarks so our benchmark graphs are recycled from our very recent testing of the PowerColor X700 Pro. Both ATI's $200 cards in the X700 Pro and X700 XT occupy the same $200 MSRP as the 6600GT. The previous $200 card on the PCIe side from ATI was the X600, which is basically a 9600XT with a faster memory clock. ATI has touted the 6 vertex pipelines as one of the advantages it has over the 6600GT's 3 vertex pipelines and we put them to the test with our choice of what we consider to be a midrange processor with the Prescott 3.0. We pair the Prescott 3.0 with another midrange part, a DDR based 915. Because this is still a midrange card so we opted for a 915/DDR solution instead of a 925x/DDR2 solution.

Benchmarks

Half Life 2: Video Stress Test
Aquamark 3
Splinter Cell (tbilisi 1_1_1, 1_1_2)
Halo
X2 Rolling Demo
Call of Duty (brecourt)
Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Academy (rift sanctuary, taspir)
Unreal Tournament 2k4 (dm_metallurgy)
Far Cry (River Level)
DOOM 3
Counter-Strike: Source