Retail Geforce 6600GT Exploration

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.