XFX
This card is the beast of our roundup: The XFX 6600GT Extreme Gamer Edition. XFX is the only vendor that we've seen take a stand and do something different. The first thing to notice is the dual DVI connectors on the board. This isn't normally something one would need on a mid-range solution, but having just come from newegg.com and noticed that the standard XFX card with dual DVI costs less than some PCIe 6600 GT parts without dual DVI, there's no reason to start talking about cost being a huge issue, and thus, no good argument for why dual DVI isn't on these cards.There is something that this card has for which a premium may be charged: 1.6ns GDDR3 running at 600MHz. We haven't seen pricing yet, but this part is obviously not going to be the "be all, end all" value of graphics cards. Adding memory bandwidth is a good thing for the 6600 GT, considering the 128-bit bus. The problem is that the performance benefit is maybe half the increase in memory bandwidth, if we are lucky. And we might see better scaling with AA enabled, but on a mainstream part, that's pushing the limits.
Anyway, modifying the stock HSF, XFX placed a copper plate between the die and heatsink in order to increase the tension in the spring pegs and keep harder pressure on the GPU. Also, they are doing the same thing that we saw Leadtek do - there is a bit of material around the silicon that acts as a spacer between the rest of the GPU and the heatsink. This is necessary because the copper plate lifted the rubber nubs off the PCB making them ineffective stabilizers.
This card was loud, but cooled well due to their innovative adaptation of the stock cooling solution. The inclusion of 1.6ns GDDR3 will also be very attractive at a default clock speed of 600MHz. But this will not be appealing if it is incredibly higher priced than the current round of 6600 GT products, especially since (whether by design or chance) Sparkle's 6600 GT had 2ns RAM that overclocked to 610MHz as well.
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arswihart - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
my mistake, didn't actually read some of the articlebbomb - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
#20 Derek said that Pine = XFX so he did review the card with the buy me link.arswihart - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
#21 - i guess thats what arctic cooling is for...speaking of which, its good to see some makers adopting similar hsf designs to the arctic coolers, except for the part about shunting the air directly out of the case
I just saw that asus does have a 6600gt coming, and it has a very arctic cooling-esque design which I like, also, I think the albatron in this round-up has some semblance as well, too bad its fan is so loud
mindless1 - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
I agree, the heatsinks (and particularly fans) are disappointing. If they just abandoned the idea of the fansink only taking up one slot-height they'd have a lot more freedom to improve things (like fan thickness, which could combat noise AND longevity). It might even be better to prevent someone from sandwiching another card in next to the video anyway, taking up more than one slot thickness could be a positive thing all around. Not that it would "need" be two slots thick, but even an extra 5mm is a lot on such a thin 'sink.arswihart - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
the leadtek has just looked like a solid card since i first saw it, I'm not surprised by the results, this card is clearly the best of all in this roundup#6 - I agree that most of the other HSF's look really cheap, especially the Chaintech, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Inno3d, and MSI just from eye-balling them.
#10 - nice point, Anand, why do you even include these deals on the review pages? I can only assume its basically an ad that the company is paying for, and you are half-way endorsing the product, and in this case, not even reviewing it as we meanwhile read about 11 other competing cards
overall, these cards look pretty cheap, I think the quality control issues highlight this
anyone know if asus or abit plans to make 6600gt's (or any other manufacturer)?
Filibuster - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
Thanks for the info Derek!ocyl - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
Derek > This is a follow-up to my post at #16. I have done a quick research, and here is a simple comparison chart of video-in implementations of these cards.Albatron PC6600GTV/PC6600GT: Yes/No (not sure which one was tested)
Chaintech SE6600G: No
Galaxy GF6600GT: No
Gigabyte GV-NX66T128D/GV-NX66256D: No/No (Did Gigabyte send you a NX66256D? I don't know if they've got a wrong picture on their website but it looks like they may have sent you an overclocked 6600 instead of a real 6600GT).
Inno3D GeForce 6600 GT: No
Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH: No
MSI NX6600GT-VTD128E/NX6600GT-TD128E: Yes/No (not sure which one was tested)
Palit GeForce 6600GT: No
Prolink PV-N43E(128LD): No
Sparkle SP-PX43GVH/SP-PX43GDH: Yes/No (not sure which one was tested)
XFX PVT43GNDD7: No
In terms of full product lines (6600 series PCI Express + AGP), MSI has 4 out of 8 cards featuring video-in, followed by Sparkle (1 out of 4) and Albatron (1 out of 8).
Oscar
DerekWilson - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
I would like to appologize -- Galaxy just informed me that they are, in fact, shipping their 6600gts at 525/550 ...this modest overclock comes basically free to the end users -- this gets them an editors choice award as no other vendor has shipped with a default core oc.
ocyl - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
Derek > Thank you for paying attention to the noise issue in the report. It will be great if we can also see a discussion/comparison of VIVO implementation (or lack thereof) in the future since video processing is now a built-in feature of the GPU :)DerekWilson - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
Yes, I oc'd myself ... but i'd like to know where i said clock stock so i can fix it ;-)Trogdor -- 3 mount points would have worked fine. there aren't any larger images... that was a mistake -- I appologize.
redavnl -- Pine is XFX
Fillibuster -- high quality for doom 3, and the gigabyte card may be called 6600 series, but it is a 6600 gt (clocked at 500/500 with sli)
Pete -- as always, thanks for the constructive feedback. i've altered the sound bits to reflect 6db to 10db being a double in perceived volume. I knew 3db was the power doubling point not perception, i was just overclocking myself too much that night :-) ...
we stick to 1M distances for a few logistic reasons. after this article: http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2126&... it was pointed out to us that a 5 cm distance skews the results because of things like turbulance from the fan. talking to some audio engineers, it seems measuring the spl level of a system at 1 meter is pretty standard.
we do actually measure with no case. It does acutally sit on a desk on a layer of foam, though any sound deadening is secondary. I don't think I have any cases in my lab.
We'll continue to look into the sound issue, but I wouldn't think having a box literally 12 inches from your ear is a commonly possible thing (i can't even get my monitor 12 inches from my eyes). I could see 5 decimeters maybe ...
we will continue to look into the spl issue.