Overclocking Comparison
With overclocking, every GPU is different, so a side effect of looking at this is that we get a good idea of how the 6600GT will overclock in a general sense. We can't really say that all Albatron cards will overclock by 90MHz. Believe us when we say that if they all would run at that speed, they would all be running at that speed and out-selling the competition. There are a lot of factors that go into it. That's why we base most of our recommendation and ranking decisions on cooling and noise levels rather than overclocking. It is still a factor though.
Those with a calculator handy will notice that the mean median and standard deviation are:
Mean: 568.10
Median: 571
Std. Dev.: 17.1840
Knowing NVIDIA, QA is going to assure that chips leaving labs will run at a little higher than stock clock speeds. This translates to a little bit of breathing room. What we pull away from this testing is that we expect Geforce 6600GT's to achieve a minium 7% overclock. A 9% to 12% overclock should be possible to most people who decide to own this card. Beyond that is icing on the cake. Of course, we are working with a very small sample size and we don't know much about the population as a whole either. We would have been more comfortable making predictions had this data looked more like a bell curve, but what we see is a little too flat for us to say anything with any statistical confidence.
Our memory clock speed graph shows Sparkle on top, but that's 2ns RAM on a 110MHz overclock. The XFX RAM is running 1.6ns RAM at a 10MHz overclock. This could be really lucky for Sparkle, but it isn't likely to happen on most boards. A 22% memory overclock, even with the added features of GDDR3, is still tough to pull off, especially when the 1.6ns memory only matched its performance. Inno3D also uses 1.6ns memory, but our final overclock ended up lower than the 600MHz that should have been possible with this part.
All the other solutions are 2ns memories which overclock between 50 and 100MHz. All the memories we looked at on 6600 GT boards are Samsung GDDR3 solutions.
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geogecko - Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - link
Well, two e-mails later to XFX, without an answer to my questions, and now I see this PNY PCI-E card with dual dvi and hdtv out pod...guess who's going to get my money?Beatnik - Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - link
Two links of interest:
http://www.xfxforce.com/pinetechnotes/Fan%20Update...
http://www.pny.com/products/verto/performance/6600...
Nice article folks!
Beatnik - Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - link
Seems pretty clear that a lot of people are waiting on their next upgrade, hence the continued heavy AGP interest. w.r.t. the XFX, it looks like they have a online store, and now have a pretty cool looking heatsink on the AGP card:
http://www.xfxforce.com/pinetechnotes/Fan%20Update...
The PNY 6600GT AGP product looks interesting also: http://www.pny.com/products/verto/performance/6600...
Might be the only DVI+DVI+component video out.
(Outstanding article guys!)
Rekonn - Monday, December 27, 2004 - link
I too would really like to see a roundup like this one done for 6600GT AGP cards.zoros - Sunday, December 26, 2004 - link
Anyone know how well PNY 6600GT is doing in there tests.. I have tried to find information everywhere, but with no sucess.. :-(geogecko - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I agree. PC's have started to move into the home theater more than ever now, and people (me included) are reading your articles to obtain knowledge when building home theater PC's. This information is not there, and thus still leaves me in the dark as to which video card to purchase for my HTPC.No word from XFX on their HDTV Output compatibility, so I must assume they don't support it, which stinks, considering they have the only card with dual DVI connectors, and a decent HSF design.
I realize this was a quick review, but video cards are now being required to have HD compatibility since so many people are interested in HTPC's these days. No one wants a DVR that forces advertising on them when they fast forward past commercials...so why not build a DVR that does more than TiVo intead...
How about an update with HDTV Output compatibility, along with who includes the cables?
nvdm24 - Sunday, December 19, 2004 - link
How much longer will us readers allow these ridiculous reviews to go on? Many of the readers of these tech sites want to know the FULL capabilities of these cards, not just how they run doom 3 and other 3d games. Sadly, reviewers at anandtech and every other tech site ignore the VIDEO capabilities of VIDEO cards. Even this review of the new 6600 agp ignores the video aspect of the 6600, despite the problems of the 6800, that weren't discovered by any reviewer, since none of them tested it for video. Not testing the video aspect does a HUGE disservice to readers. It's quite simple, just test a dvd movie and make sure the video aspect works and let readers know. If you feel particularly energetic, you could also test how fast it renders home movies, etc. You may think this is the job of a VIDEO site or PC site, but you are a PC site, a tech site. You would be surprised at the people who read your reviews. Others are going to start doing the job better, thus pull away readers if you don't get it together.ChineseDemocracyGNR - Friday, December 17, 2004 - link
Hi Derek,any word from the manufactures that had problems, are they sending you new cards?
I was reading some user reviews for the MSI 6600GT _AGP_ at gameve.com and it also has heating problems, which is disapointing. Do you plan a similar article on the 6600GT AGP cards?
1q3er5 - Friday, December 17, 2004 - link
ouch u got me good there :( im never posting again :o lolDerekWilson - Friday, December 17, 2004 - link
#54 We scored cards more on construction, cooling, and noise, rather than on overclockability. thus the Albatron didn't get an award.Also, the leadtek card you liked to is the AGP version. We tested PCI Express parts only. The heatsink you mention is not cooling RAM, but the HSI (PCIe to AGP bridge).