Galaxy
We haven't had a Galaxy card in our labs before, and we were happy to see a card with a custom-round HSF attached very firmly after all the loosely attached rectangular solutions that we had the pleasure of handling. The springs on the hardware are much tighter than on the other solutions that we've seen, and the shape of the heatsink doesn't give us enough leverage when we press on it to pop it off the GPU. Though it is still possible to twist the HSF around the axis created by the two spring pin mounts, it is something that a consumer would have to try to do.Since this card has no shroud on its fan, this will also sound different than some of the other solutions that we've seen. Shrouds can help to direct airflow on larger heatsinks, but since this cooling solution doesn't try to cool the RAM as well as the core, a small circular design is fine.
We were happy with this card's ability to stay cool at idle and load. The only downside that we saw was the board's overclocking performance. Galaxy sent us this part at a pre-overclocked 525/550. We originally thought this was a press sample card, as the packaging materials that came with the box indicated a 500/500 clock speed. On the contrary, Galaxy has informed us that all of their 6600 GT products are shipping at 525/550 clock speeds. In the end, this part was our worst overclocker, which is a surprising combination when talking about our coolest part. It really could have been luck of the draw as the worst case GPU and worst case RAM configuration of the bunch, but that does seem like an awful bit of luck.
If you aren't planning to overclock from stock, this is absolutely a wonderful 6600 GT option. For someone who needs good cooling and low noise in their case, Galaxy is top notch. Since this product comes with added performance at no extra hassle, it's definitely a top pick in our books.
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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.