AMDReview.com :: Your Source for News, Reviews and Information : : XFX 6600GT 128Mb AGP 8x Video Card

XFX 6600GT 128Mb AGP 8x Video Card

Manufacturer:	XFX
Title:	XFX 6600GT 128Mb AGP 8x Video Card
Availability:	Immediately
Author:
Date:	12-10-2004
Price:	$249.00

Discuss this review in our forums

There are 6 parts to this review, please use the pulldown below to browse sections or simply hit "Next" at the bottom of each section to continue

Introduction

You definitely know that through SEO, your business will benefit hugely, so you have to make sure to find the right Link Building Company that can help you gain your goals SEO on lookup motor rankings, finding the best Link Building Company for your business is a lot more crucial than ever. Link building Company will help you | Simple Website Templates. Every great website and web design needs a starting place or point. Our own newly redesigned website started from a basic template that was heavily modified to suit our needs and the same can be done for you. Using our simple sea website templates on our site you can buy website templates

I wanted to do something a little different this time. I had this 6600GT video card to review, but I knew there would be lots of sites out there with the same old hard facts and figures with benchmarks of games like UT2004 and Far Cry. I decided to go a different route. I wanted to bring to you a review of the card, including the specs and such, but also wanted to provide some useful information as far as how well it plays the most system demanding game to date, Half Life 2. You will find some benchmarks of other games here as well just for a reference. I was hoping to find that this card, which happens to be in the lower range as far as price, would be able to handle HL2 easily and for much less money than a 6800GT/Ultra or an ATI X800 XT both of which can cost from $400-$600 or more. Our 6600GT today goes for about $250, nearly half of what it's older siblings go for, and it is this reason I wanted to show you that anyone who has been considering upgrading their video card for HL2 will find this to be one hard deal to beat as far as price vs. performance.

Test System

Windows XP Pro SP2
P4 3.0E
512Mb OCZ PC3200 ram
Abit IC7-G motherboard
Thermaltake Silent Pure Power 420W PSU w/Active PFC
XFX 6600GT 128Mb AGP 8x video card
Audigy sound card

Specifications

Now lets see how the 6600GT stacks up to it's older siblings, the 6800 series as far as hard specs. Direct from Nvidia's site:

Chipset/Core Speed: nVIDIA GeForce 6600GT/500MHz
Memory/Effective Speed: 128MB GDDR3/1000MHz
BUS: AGP 8X
Ports: TV-Out (S-Video) + 2x DVI
Support 3D API: DirectX 9(Shader Model 3.0),L 1.5
Max Resolution@32bit Color: 2048X1536@85Hz
Cable/Accessories: S-Video Cable, 2x DVI to VGA adaptor, Manual, Driver CD, Games and Softwares
Retail Box (See pics for details)

What was interesting to see with XFX's AGP 8x model was that the memory is clocked higher than other manufacturer's GT models. A lot of GT models from other manufacturers are clocked 500Mhz core and 450Mhz memory(900Mhz DDR). The XFX comes stock 500Mhz core and 500Mhz memory(1000Mhz DDR). Seems that they could have had another card in the mix, a standard 6600, a 6600GT and a 6600GT OC like so many other manufacturers do these days, but this is the standard 6600GT clocks out of the box, same as the PCI-E version, nice to see. We should have plenty of bandwidth still as this card uses Samsung memory modules rated for 600Mhz. We'll get to that later.