Final Words
Working with all of these cards has been difficult, especially when one wrong move could cause quite a few problems. We apologize for not being able to report numbers that reflect what cards from Gigabyte, MSI, and Prolink can do in terms of cooling. We extend to these three companies an invitation: if you would send us another sample, we will retest your card and amend updated numbers to our tests. At the same time, we went ahead and included these numbers because these cards were how they were sent. It is rather alarming how few precautions were taken to prevent loss of contact between the GPU and the HSF on Geforce 6600 GT cards as a whole.Just to clarify, the specific problem that we have is when companies used a thermal adhesive that cracks, tape that tears, or something that is otherwise compromised by the torque of a freely rotating heatsink. Vendors using non-adhesive solutions tended not to suffer the kind of immediate long-term damage that we saw with the aforementioned cards, but the ultimate solution is really to stop the heatsink from moving.
In the end, we survived the test, and we have handed out our awards. Here they are without further ado.
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Among the top three performers in Noise, Idle Temp, and Load Temp, this card overclocked well to boot. Armed with a padded surface mounted around the exposed silicon and a circular HSF solution, many of the stability issues that plagued other implementations were avoided. We are very pleased to award the AnandTech Gold Editor's Choice to the Leadtek Winfast PX6600 GT TDH. |
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This card might not be the cheapest of the bunch, but it surpasses everyone else easily with Dual DVI, 1.6ns GDDR3, a loud fan, an even louder retail package, an attempt at stabilizing the HSF, and a load temperature that never rose above 69 degrees C. The only problem with this card is that all the added features likely contribute to its less than stellar overclocking capability. And thus, the XFX Geforce 6600GT Extreme Gamer is awarded our Silver Editor's Choice. |
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The Galaxy 6600 GT has quite a lot going for it. It is the coolest, quietest, fastest stock card that we tested. It also has a good HSF solution that doesn't fall off as easily as some of its competition. The problem is that this coolest card is also the worst overclocker. This could be bad luck, but it could also be indicative of something else. This is the first time we've had them in our labs, and shipping 525/550 while leading in cooling secures the Galaxy 6600GT AnandTech's Bronze Editor's Choice Award. |
As for the rest of the pack, they all had many strengths that are spread among many cards. We'll tell you why potential candidates didn't quite make the Editor's Choice list.
When it comes to Inno3D, we liked them because of their firmly attached HSF solution and very solid all-around performance. The real downside to Inno3D was their noise level. They weren't the best overclocker in the bunch, but they weren't worst the either.
Chaintech and Albatron missed Editor's Choice because they didn't have any stabilization on their heatsinks. The problems that inflicted Gigabyte and MSI could just as easily have happened to them.
Solving this HSF mounting problem was one of the top issues for us today, and it should be a key factor in the decision for anyone in an IT build room or whose idea of a good time is playing around in their case. Being careful (taunting fate?) is fine if you open your box once every year-and-a-half to dust and upgrade. If your job has anything to do with video cards, and you might be seeing one of the cards that we mentioned in this review, don't get anything without a completely stable HSF mounting system. The expanded pads are a little more stable than the solutions that only make contact with the silicon, but if were building systems with these cards, I would limit purchasing descisions to cards with some sort of 4-corner support (or zero leverage). Of the products we tested, here's our short list of IT-friendly 6600 GT parts:
Inno3D - solid mounting foam at two non-attached corners
Sparkle - rubber nubs around 4 corners
Galaxy - very tight springs and no leverage around the circle to move the HSF
XFX doesn't make the list because, at this point, we aren't sure which way they are going to go with the design. It looks as if they are adopting a design more like Leadtek's and just expanding the contact area with the area around the core, so they may be dropping the rubber altogether. Hopefully, they'll just find some rubber that fits and squeeze it on in there.
When all is said and done, we have to put a good part of the responsibility for the HSF mounting issues on NVIDIA. They do come up with the reference board design, and they end up placing the mounting holes for the cooling solutions on these boards. Obviously, these boards aren't 6800 Ultra Extreme parts and they don't need to have the cooling solution torqued down onto the core. But, at the same time, it would be nice if vendors didn't have to rely on spacers, pads, or other tricks in order to keep their cooling solutions in contact with the GPU.
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Pete - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
Obviously Derek OCed himself to get this article out, and he's beginning to show error. Better bump your (alarm) clocks down 10MHz (an hour) or so, Derek.pio!pio! - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
Noticed a typo. At one point your wrote 'clock stock speed' instead of 'stock clock speed' easy mistake.Pete - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
Another reason to narrow the distance b/w the mic and the noise source is that some of these cards may go into SFFs, or cases that sit on the desk. 12" may well be more indicative of the noise level those users would experience.Pete - Friday, December 10, 2004 - link
Great article, Derek!As usual, I keep my praise concise and my constructive criticism elaborate (although I could argue that the fact that I keep coming back is rather elaborate praise :)). I think you made the same mistake I made when discussing dB and perceived noise, confusing power with loudness. From the following two sources, I see that a 3dB increase equates to 2x more power, but is only 1.23x as loud. A 10db increase corresponds to 10x more power and a doubling of loudness. So apparently the loudest HSFs in this roundup are "merely" twice as loud as the quietest.
http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/voltagelou...
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article121-page1.htm...
Speaking of measurements, do you think 1M is a bit too far away, perhaps affording less precision than, say, 12"?
You might also consider changing the test system to a fanless PSU (Antec and others make them), with a Zalman Reserator cooling the CPU and placed at as great a distance from the mic as possible. I'd also suggest simply laying the test system out on a piece of (sound-dampening) foam, rather than fitting it in a case (with potential heat trapping and resonance). The HD should also be as quiet as possible (2.5"?).
I still think you should buy these cards yourselves, a la Consumer Reports, if you want true samples (and independence). Surely AT can afford it, and you could always resell them in FS/FT for not much of a loss.
Anyway, again, cheers for an interesting article.
redavnI - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
Very nice article, but any chance we could get a part 2 with any replacement cards the manufacturers send and I'd like the see the Pine card reviewed too. It's being advertised as the Anandtech Deal at the top of this article and has dual dvi like the XFX card. Kind of odd one of the only cards not reviewed gets a big fat buy me link.To me it seems that with the 6600GT/6800 series Nvidia has their best offering since the Geforce4 TI's...I'm sure I'm not the only one still hanging on to my Ti4600.
Filibuster - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
Something I've just realized: The Gigabyte NX66T256D is not a GT yet supports SLI. Are they using a GT that can't run at the faster speeds and selling it as a 6600 standard? It has 256MB.We ordered two from a vendor who said it definately does SLI.
http://www.giga-byte.com/VGA/Products/Products_GV-...
Can you guys find out for sure?
TrogdorJW - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
Derek, the "enlarged images" all seem to be missing, or else the links are somehow broken. I tested with Firefox and IE6 and neither one would resolve the image links.Other than that, *wow* - who knew HSFs could be such an issue? I'm quite surprised that they are only secured at two corners. Would it really have been that difficult to use four mount points? The long-term prospects for these cards are not looking too good.
CrystalBay - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
Great job on the quality control inspections of these cards D.W. Hopefully IHV's take notice and resolve these potentially damageing problems.LoneWolf15 - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
I didn't see a single card in this review that didn't have a really cheesey looking fan...the type that might last a couple years if you're really lucky, but might last six months on some cards if you're not. The GeForce 6600GT is a decent card; for $175-250 (depending on PCIe or AGP) you'd think vendors would put a fan deserving of the price. My PNY 6800NU came with a squirrel-cage fan and super heavy heatsink that I know will last. Hopefully, Arctic Cooling will come out with an NV Silencer soon for the 6600 family; I wouldn't trust any of the fans I saw here to last.Filibuster - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
What quality settings were used in the games?I am assuming that Doom 3 is in medium since these are 128MB cards.
I've read that there are some 6600GT 256MB cards coming out (Gigabyte GV-NX66T256D and MSI 6600GT-256E, maybe more) Please show us some tests with the 256MB models once they hit the streets (or if you know they are definately not, please tell us that too)
Even though the cards only have 128bit bus, wouldn't the extra ram help out in places like Doom 3 where texture quality is a matter of ram quantity? The local video ram still has to be faster than fetching it from system ram.