X-bit labs

Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH Graphics Card Review

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 03/25/2005 | 12:24 PM ]

Please meet a new graphics card from Leadtek, which has just left our labs. Excellent performance, high-quality cooling solution and nice accessories bundle – this product is definitely worth taking into consideration when shopping around for a graphics card. More details in our review!

Table of contents:

• Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH
  
• Closer Look
  
• Noise, Overclocking, 2D Quality
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance in First-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Doom III
  
• Unreal Tournament 2004
  
• The Chronicles of Riddick
  
• Far Cry
  
• Painkiller: Battle Out of Hell
  
• Half-Life 2
  
• Performance in Third Person 3D Shooters
  
• Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
  
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
  
• Performance in Simulators
  
• IL-2 Sturmovik: Aces in the Sky
  
• Lock On: Modern Air Combat
  
• Colin McRae Rally 05
  
• Performance in Strategies
  
• Warhammer 40.000: Dawn of War
  
• Perimeter
  
• Performance in Semi-Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 3
  
• Aquamark3
  
• Performance in Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Futuremark 3DMark03
  
• Futuremark 3DMark05
  
• Conclusion
  

You may have got used already to frequent visits products from Leadtek make to our test labs. Every time it is a memorable event, as it was with the WinFast A350 TDH that astonished us with its cosmic looks (see our article called Dependence of Contemporary High-End Graphics Accelerators Performance on FSAA Mode: VisionTek Xtasy 9800 PRO and Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH Graphics Cards Review for details) or the WinFast A400 Ultra TDH with its highly potent heat-pipes-based cooling system (see our article called Leadtek WinFast A400 Ultra TDH Graphics Card Review for details).

Graphics cards from Leadtek feature a very high quality of manufacture, rich accessories and a software bundle full of useful programs, but they can’t boast noiselessness, at least if we talk about high-end devices we’ve traditionally tested so far. But now we’ve got midrange cards from Leadtek, based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GPU (NV43).

One of them, the Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH, is going to be reviewed right now.

Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH

It’s easy to read the name of a Leadtek card if you know the rules: “PX” denotes a PCI Express device, while the three letters “TDH” stand for TV-out, DVI output and hardware monitoring, respectively. Then, it’s easy to guess that “6600 GT” means we are dealing with a version of the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT graphics card.

The retail package of this product is designed like the box from the WinFast A400 Ultra TDH, but has a different size and a different picture on the front. Leadtek’s designers seem to be great admirers of fantasy: another mage, a magic staff in hand, is staring at you from the box with a PX6600 GT TDH. This paper parcel opens easily to reveal the following:

• Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH graphics card;
• Multilingual installation guide;
• User manual;
• Universal splitter (YPbPr, S-Video, RCA);
• DVI-I-to-D-Sub adapter;
• CD with drivers and software;
• CD with Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow;
• Two CDs with Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

Leadtek put a special universal adapter instead of several cables, oftentimes of a doubtable quality, that you usually find enclosed with a graphics card. A short span of cable goes from the 9-pin connector which is plugged into the appropriate socket at the graphics card’s bracket and ends in a small plastic box with a full menu of outputs: composite, YPbPr (HDTV) and S-Video. You can’t output to HDTV and S-Video/Composite at the same time, but this adapter is anyway handier when several independent cables.

The user manual was printed on a thin paper, but that’s the only drawback: the installation procedure is described in detail and illustrated as necessary. Another booklet, WinFast Graphics Series General Guide, is about the software bundle, particularly about WinFox, the software suite we already described in our Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH MyVIVO review. There’s no point in repeating ourselves, but in brief, WinFox’s functionality covers overclocking, color rendition setup, and hardware monitoring. Besides that, the VGA BIOS Flash utility from this suite allows updating the graphics card’s BIOS from Windows.

The games enclosed with this card should be already known to you if for no other reason than that we use them in our reviews. They deserve a gamer’s attention for their good graphics and plot and make a good addition to the WinFast PX6600 GT TDH.