X700 Pro vs. 6600 GT
Why are we facing off the X700 Pro and the 6600GT? Pricing and availability are the two culprits there. There are no X700 XT parts to be had, and the only thing in the marketplace to compete with NVIDIA's Geforce 6600 GT from ATI is the Radeon X700 Pro. Finding a PCIe 6600 GT at $200 is a simple matter, and from what we see, there's all of a $20 spread between cheaper 256MB X700 Pros and the 128MB versions centered around the 6600 GT price point.That being said, we do expect the $200 spent on a Geforce 6600GT to go further than on an X700 Pro. In order to test this theory, we ran some quick side-by-side performance tests of the two just to find out what the story is. We chose a resolution of 1280x1024, and tested with and without antialiasing and anisotropic filtering.
| Half-Life 2 at_coast_12-rev7 | |||
| Radeon X700 Pro 256 | Geforce 6600GT | Performance Advantage | |
| noAA/AF | 73.1 | 87.8 | 20.10% |
| 4xAA/8xAF | 48.1 | 53.3 | 10.80% |
| Winner | - | - | 6600GT |
| Doom 3 | |||
| Radeon X700 Pro 256 | Geforce 6600GT | Performance Advantage | |
| High Quality noAA | 35.2 | 60.1 | 70.70% |
| High Quality 4xAA | 18.8 | 27.6 | 46.80% |
| Winner | - | - | 6600GT |
| Far Cry Performance | |||
| Radeon X700 Pro 256 | Geforce 6600GT | Performance Advantage | |
| noAA/AF | 50 | 58.6 | 17.20% |
| 4xAA/8xAF | 26.5 | 29.3 | 10.60% |
| Winner | - | - | 6600GT |
| Unreal Tournament 2004 Performance | |||
| Radeon X700 Pro 256 | Geforce 6600GT | Performance Advantage | |
| noAA/AF | 54.7 | 51.9 | 5.10% |
| 4xAA/8xAF | 37 | 33.4 | 9.70% |
| Winner | - | - | X700 Pro |
| Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory | |||
| Radeon X700 Pro 256 | Geforce 6600GT | Performance Advantage | |
| noAA/AF | 76.9 | 90.5 | 17.70% |
| 4xAA/8xAF | 44.1 | 58.7 | 33.10% |
| Winner | - | - | 6600GT |
We can easily see from these quick tests that the 6600GT holds a pretty consistent performance advantage over the X700, even in Half-Life 2. The only title in which the X700 leads is Unreal Tournament 2004.
Aside from architecture and performance, there are a few other differences. Most of the 6600GT vendors that we looked at in our recent review came with an HDTV dongle. This accessory allows us to connect to the component input of an HDTV rather than having to go through the DVI port (which some TVs don't have). ATI also offers HDTV support through a component dongle. We only received the ATI dongle in one of our vendor's packages, and we were less impressed with the ATI interface.
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cosmotic - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
Your text ad thing turns "Unreal Tournoment" into a link thats the same color as the table header background so it looks like "2004 Performance". Why do some Anand articles use pretty graphs and some use these relitively harder to read tables?MAValpha - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
I dunno. I have one of these cards (Retail Built-By-ATI 256MB Radeon X700 Pro), and I didn't even try to push it too far. I set it up to run at XT speeds, and it does it with no problems. Performance at these settings isn't anything to sneeze at either, since it more or less matches my 6800 vanilla (within 5%, off the top of my head). Remember that preliminary benchmarks position the 6800 vanilla almost on par with the 6600GT, also.Granted, the two PCs are different, but they are both fairly close to top-of-the-line. One is a Prescott-775 running at 3.8 on i915P, the other is an AXP running 2.4 on NF2 Ultra. While they are understandably different processors, games turn in comparable framerates on both. Everything else is the same in both rigs, right down to the RAM and hard drives.
nserra - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
"For those out there who are die-hard ATI fans and absolutely need to have an X700 Pro solution, we can recommend that you simply head out and find the cheapest X700 Pro available."I do a better one, buy the basic X700, only 25Mhz lower clock and 150Mhz memory, and over clock it. And save 50$.
One thing must be pointed out, if X700 Pro is worst over 6600GT, "regular" X700 is better over "regular" 6600.
#9 My point answer your question or doubt?
ChineseDemocracyGNR - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
What I'd like to see is the $149 non-PRO non-XT X700, which is also non-existant.skunkbuster - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
can anyone tell me why ati's open GL drivers continue to suck? when are they ever going to catch up to nvidia in this regard?stelleg151 - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
I assume that the ATI cards should be considered identical to the Powercolor cards because of same look?bloc - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
Bang for the buck especially in the mid range.If ati priced the x700 accordingly and had some cards to sell, I'd consider it. Cripes I'm waiting for the 9800 pro to come down to $150 US to the 6600 GT's $200. I'd then go for the 9800 pro.
overclockingoodness - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
All I have to say is that NVIDIA's 6600 solutions are to get for mid-range setups.DerekWilson - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
The icon should be fixed -- I'm not sure what happened there :-)slurmsmackenzie - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
did anyone else stop reading after the head to head with the 6600GT?.... i just assumed everything else was just superfluous details.