by Alexey Stepin
02/17/2005 | 10:29 AM
In our article devoted to the announcement of the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GPU we said that the company had problems positioning its produce in the retail market due to the lack of a modern and fast mainstream graphics processor for the AGP 8x bus (For more details please see our review called Knowing the Depths: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT Architecture).
<%BANNER[article]%>The release of the GeForce 6600 alleviated the problem somewhat, but didn’t remove it altogether. Why? Because the GeForce 6600 was originally developed for the PCI Express platform. The PCI Express bus is rapidly gaining popularity, that’s true, but the majority of PCs are still equipped with the older AGP interface.
Thus, NVIDIA found itself incapable of offering an affordable mainstream graphic card for the general body of PC users even after the release of the GeForce 6600. Graphics cards of the GeForce FX family didn’t suit for that role as their architecture couldn’t manage modern games like Far Cry, for example. Moreover, graphics cards based on ATI’s RADEONs had already conquered almost the whole market of ready-made PCI Express systems among the major PC manufacturers in middle 2004, making it impossible for NVIDIA to become competitive with its GeForce 6 series in the fall of the same year.
Yet NVIDIA found a solution at last – it was the same small chip they had used in the GeForce PCX 5750 and PCX 5900. We mean the NVIDIA HSI bridge that added the PCI Express interface to products originally intended for the AGP bus. By a lucky chance NVIDIA’s retrograde approach to building its first PCI Express compatibles served it well now, allowing for an elegant transition of the GeForce 6600 processor to the AGP platform. The NVIDIA HSI bridge can work in either direction, so NVIDIA had only to design an appropriate PCB, with space left for a HSI chip, to make an AGP version of the GeForce 6600 GT.
Thus, NVIDIA very easily complemented its product line-up with a new mainstream AGP graphics card capable of challenging such time-tested solutions as ATI’s RADEON 9800 XT and PRO. It is to the AGP-interfaced GeForce 6600 GT that this review is dedicated.
We got a reference sample of the GeForce 6600 GT AGP graphics card from NVIDIA Corp. So it was without any package, save for an antistatic bag. This piece of hardware looks rather odd:
The engineers had to keep the PCB small and yet put a HSI chip down somewhere with all its wiring, and in doing so they turned the graphics core and the memory chips by 45 degrees. The AGP-to-PCI Express converter chip sits next to the GPU heatsink, on the right.
There’re quite naturally a lot of differences between the PCBs of the PCI Express and AGP versions of the GeForce 6600 GT. The power circuits differ, too. The AGP version has all the power elements moved to the right part of the board, while the PCI Express version has this circuit wired near the SLI connector. The AGP slot cannot provide enough power to the device, and they put an additional Molex connector on board to power the card up. The difference extends to the right part of the PCB, too. The AGP version comes with two DVI-I connectors and doesn’t have a SLI connector, of course. The GeForce 6600 GT AGP carries Samsung’s 2.0ns GDDR3 memory. The total amount of the graphics memory is 128 megabytes, like with the PCI Express version.
A curious fact is that the memory frequency on this card is 900MHz whereas the PCI Express version clocks its memory at 1,000MHz. The company may have reduced the default memory frequency to ensure its stability after the redesign of the PCB wiring, but our sample was quite operable at 1,000MHz memory frequency. The graphics processor works at 500MHz, just as it should.
The cooling system is borrowed from the GeForce 6600 GT PCI Express – the same modest, black cooler equipped with a small transparent fan. The only difference is the picture on the metal cover – instead of NVIDIA’s logo we see a monster with bared teeth and the text “Doom 3”. That’s probably a hint to you that NVIDIA’s cards are the best choice for this particular game. The converter chip is hidden under a small black heatsink which is rather hot at work.
The noise parameters are identical to those of the GeForce 6600 GT for PCI Express as these cards are both equipped with the same cooler (see our article called Knowing the Depths: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT Architecture). In brief, the cooler is noticeably noisy, but the frequency range of this noise isn’t annoying.
The quality of the image the card was yielding in 2D applications was sharp in all resolutions up to 1800x1440@75Hz inclusive. Well, it becomes almost a useless job to evaluate the quality of the 2D image provided by modern graphics cards. There are ever more LCD monitors with the DVI interface, but even apart from that all modern graphics cards from leading and obscure manufacturers alike ensure a highest image quality in all resolutions. You can only have problems with cheap no-name devices where the manufacturer has tried to save on every cent.
Our GPU overclocking experiments were very rewarding as we managed to reach 560MHz frequency without any additional cooling. The memory refused to speed up above 1,000MHz – 3DMark would be all artifacts if the memory clock rate was just a few megahertz higher. So the reduction of the default memory frequency from 1000 to 900MHz seems reasonable as some samples of the GeForce 6600 GT AGP may be unstable at 1,000MHz memory frequency.
To all appearances, the GeForce 6600 GT AGP graphics card is a well-made product. We only have to check it out in a real race, choosing the RADEON 9800 XT as its opponent. It is only a year ago that this RADEON was considered the height of consumer graphics hardware, so the next, practical section of this review is going to be most interesting.
We performed the tests on our AGP platform configured like that:
Software:
We used the following graphics cards for the comparison:
The Catalyst A.I. option was set to “Standard”, and the Mipmap Detail Level option to “Quality”. We disabled VSync in the drivers for all the participating cards. We also turned off the ForceWare optimizations save for the Anisotropic mip filter optimization, using the Quality mode.
We turned on full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering from the game’s own menu. Otherwise we forced the necessary mode from the driver. In all cases we only adjusted those settings which were accessible to any user; we didn’t change the games’ configuration files. The maximum graphics quality settings were selected in each game, the same for graphics cards on ATI’s and NVIDIA’s GPUs.
We used the following games and benchmarks for this review:
First-Person 3D Shooters
Third-Person 3D Shooters
Simulators
Strategy Games
Semi-Synthetic Benchmarks
Synthetic Benchmarks
NVIDIA’s card features a more advanced architecture and relies on a more efficient OpenGL driver, but its memory bus is narrow, only 128 bits wide. That’s why this card is ahead of the RADEON 9800 XT in low resolutions and a little behind it in high ones. The gap is a negligible 2 frames per second in 1600x1200, though.
The memory subsystem is dragging the GeForce 6600 GT AGP down in the “eye candy” mode, although this card is faster than the RADEON 9800 XT in 1024x768 resolution.
A moment of triumph for the GeForce 6600 GT AGP! The new-generation architecture and the perfect OpenGL driver match the specifics of the new game engine from id Software to put on a spectacular performance.
Even using a wider 256-bit memory bus the RADEON 9800 XT is no match for the GeForce 6600 GT AGP in the “eye candy” mode.
We meet the same situation on the d3dm4 map for multiplayer. The RADEON 9800 XT is routed completely, while the performance of the GeForce 6600 GT AGP matches the much more expensive RADEON X800 PRO!
When we enable full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, the NVIDIA card of course falls behind the RADEON X800 PRO, but is ahead of the RADEON 9800 XT (not as far ahead as in “pure speed” modes, though).
All sufficiently fast graphics cards have the same results in Unreal Tournament as a rule, being limited by the speed of the system’s CPU, but this time NVIDIA’s modern cards are somewhat worse against the other participants. In 1600x1200 the GeForce 6600 GT AGP equals the RADEON 9800 XT, though.
The GeForce 6600 GT AGP and the RADEON 9800 XT are racing neck and neck in 1024x768 and 1600x1200: the cards hit against the speed ceiling set by the CPU in the lowest resolution, while in the highest display mode there’s fight between the GeForce’s advanced architectural features and the RADEON’s 256-bit memory bus. As for 1280x1024 resolution, which becomes the more popular as there are more LCD monitors with a diagonal of 17” and longer, the wider bus of the RADEON 9800 XT cannot compensate for the deficiencies of its older architecture, and the GeForce 6600 GT AGP wins there.
The speed ceiling is set at a different height for ATI’s and NVIDIA’s cards, so we can’t honestly compare them in the low resolutions here. In 1600x1200, however, there’s equality between the RADEON 9800 XT and the GeForce 6600 GT AGP.
The “eye candy” mode on the Metallurgy map isn’t like the one on the Torlan level: the opponents are equals in the first two resolutions, and then the GeForce 6600 GT AGP falls behind in 1600x1200, but by no more than 5fps.
Far Cry boasts incomparably more complex graphics than Halo, but the new graphics card isn’t taken aback by that fact in the slightest. It is as fast here as the RADEON 9800 XT, in all the tested resolutions.
Our turning on full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering doesn’t affect the situation in general: the GeForce 6600 GT AGP is successfully competing with the RADEON 9800 XT.
The Research map is even more appropriate for modern GPUs from both NVIDIA and ATI as it has many per-pixel-processed light sources. GeForce 6 and RADEON X700/X800 GPUs can work with long shaders and process such light sources in a single pass, while graphics cards with support of Shader Model 2.0 have to do this in several passes. That’s why the GeForce 6600 GT AGP is considerably better than the RADEON 9800 XT in this test.
Increasing the load on the memory bus by turning on FSAA + anisotropic filtering we diminish the advantage of NVIDIA’s mainstream card – its performance goes down to the level of the RADEON 9800 XT in high resolutions. Still, this is an achievement considering the simplicity of the GeForce 6600 GT AGP and its price, too, which is much lower than the price of the RADEON 9800 XT.
The speed of this game directly depends on the pixel shader performance of the graphics card. The GeForce 6600 GT AGP has no problems here, leaving the RADEON 9800 XT behind in all of the resolutions. The latter cannot show its best since Halo doesn’t support FSAA and doesn’t have complex textures, being originally released for Microsoft’s Xbox platform.
The GeForce 6600 GT AGP has excellent results here, outperforming the RADEON 9800 XT by 20-25 percent in all resolutions.
This card is also good in the “eye candy” mode, yielding its leading position to the RADEON 9800 XT in the highest, 1600x1200 resolution only.
The Canals maps are remarkable for their water which is rendered using pixel shaders. Creating realistic water in games usually takes very complex shaders and the speed of the game will greatly depend on the ability of the graphics card to quickly perform complex math1ematics. The RADEON 9800 XT feels more confident here than the GeForce 6600 GT: the gap is about 15 percent.
The RADEON 9800 XT is superior in the “eye candy” mode, too, as besides its ability to effectively handle math1ematics-heavy shaders it is also greatly aided by its wider memory bus here.
The speed on the d3_c17_02 map is mostly determined by the CPU as our demo record shows a fight with many participants. Anyway, we can see the results of the cards differ in 1600x1200: the GeForce 6600 GT is less than 10 percent slower than the RADEON 9800 XT.
The gap becomes wider in the “eye candy” mode, reaching its maximum in 1600x1200, because the NVIDIA card feels the narrowness of its 128-bit memory bus.
Although running on the same game engine as Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source has less complex scenes. It is a multiplayer shooter, as you know, and the quality of the graphics in this genre is of less importance than in solo games. Here, the GeForce 6600 GT AGP is almost on the same level with the RADEON 9800 XT.
The new GeForce is losing its ground in the “eye candy”, again due to the low memory bus. The gap is the widest in 1600x1200.
We have almost the same picture on the Piranesi level: the RADEON 9800 XT and the GeForce 6600 GT are almost equally fast in the “pure speed” mode, but the ATI card is still a tiny step ahead.
FSAA and anisotropic filtering enabled, we again see the GeForce 6600 GT falling farther behind the RADEON 9800 XT.
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow resembles Halo: Combat Evolved as they both came to the PC from game consoles, are both rich in shader-based special effects, but have few complex textures. So we might have expected similar results, but the GeForce 6600 GT AGP surprisingly loses this test to the RADEON 9800 XT, although the gap is less than 8fps in 1600x1200. We guess it is somehow related to the complexity of the pixel shaders employed in this game.
It’s different in Price of Persia: working better with textures and complex geometry, the GeForce 6600 GT AGP boasts a 1.5 times higher speed than the RADEON 9800 XT in all the resolutions.
The GeForce 6600 GT AGP is already a cut above the RADEON 9800 in 1280x1024.
NVIDIA’s mainstream graphics card wins in the “eye candy” mode, too, but it’s only 5-8fps ahead of the RADEON 9800 XT in high resolutions, the absolute speeds being about 75-80fps. On the other hand, Max Payne 2 is not a very informative benchmark since it doesn’t use all the capabilities of modern graphics processors.
We want to remind you that third-person shooters are tested manually, so the results should be regarded only as approximations.
Like any flight simulator, IL-2 has complex high-resolution textures, but it also uses shaders to create the water surface and defaults to the OpenGL API. These things considered, the victory of the GeForce 6600 GT AGP looks natural in this test.
NVIDIA’s solution yields an almost 50-percent higher frame rate in the “eye candy” mode!
There are practically no pixel shaders in Lock On, but the GeForce 6600 GT AGP remains the leader of the mainstream. Mark also that its performance remains almost the same regardless of the resolution.
The new graphics card shows its best in the “eye candy” mode, too. We should remind you that Lock On is an intolerably capricious and unpredictable game in terms of repeatability of the test results, the numbers as only approximations.
Colin McRae Rally 04 creates its special effects with the help of pixel shaders which don’t poise any serious problems before the RADEON 9800 XT or the GeForce 6600 GT AGP. The latter’s graphics core work at a higher frequency, so it’s a little ahead of the opponent.
Turning on full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering we see the mainstream card of the new generation beating the older generation, in spite of the GeForce 6600 GT AGP’s narrower 128-bit memory bus.
In low resolutions this strategy game can’t run faster due to the CPU’s playing a bottleneck. The results differ in 1600x1200, however, where the GeForce 6600 GT is slightly slower than the RADEON 9800 XT because the latter profits by its 256-bit memory bus.
Turning on FSAA + anisotropic filtering doesn’t change the general picture: the RADEON 9800 XT is a leader in Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour.
The GeForce 6600 GT AGP is by far ahead of the RADEON 9800 XT in Perimeter, considering the absolute frame rates of about 20-25fps. On the other hand, there’s only one resolution for playing this game comfortably on this card – 1024x768.
It’s all vice versa in the “eye candy” mode where the NVIDIA card is outperformed by the RADEON 9800 XT, again due to its narrow memory bus.
As you can see in the diagram, the new version of the benchmark from Square Enix dislikes NVIDIA’s cards for some unknown reason. It doesn’t take a microscope to see how far behind the RADEON 9800 XT the GeForce 6600 GT AGP is.
Aquamark3’s conditions are favorable for the GeForce 6600 GT AGP as this test is known to have sophisticated geometry and a high overdraw coefficient. Yet the NVIDIA card is only a tiny step ahead of the RADEON 9800 XT here.
The same goes for the “eye candy” mode where there’s no difference in the performance of the two mainstream cards at all.
The GeForce 6600 GT AGP has a considerably higher total score than the RADEON 9800 has, but don’t forget that 3DMark defaults to 1024x768 resolution. So let’s better examine the results of this benchmark in more detail.
The first test of 3DMark03’s is very simple and only uses DirectX 7 functions, so it’s natural for the GeForce 6600 GT to win here.
The new GeForce is better than the RADEON 9800 XT in the “eye candy” mode, too, excepting 1600x1200 resolution where it feels the lack of memory bandwidth again.
The rendering techniques of the second game test ideally suit the NV4x architecture, so the GeForce 6600 GT is again far ahead of its opponent.
Unlike in the first test, the GeForce 6600 GT wins all the resolutions with enabled FSAA and anisotropic filtering. The gap is wide enough even in 1600x1200.
The third game test is technically identical to the second one, so we’ve got the same situation here: the GeForce 6600 GT beats the RADEON 9800 XT.
The mainstream graphics card from NVIDIA again wins the “eye candy” mode, in all the tested resolutions.
The GeForce 6600 GT AGP is less successful in the fourth test where there are complex version 2.0 pixel shaders, yet its performance roughly matches that of the RADEON 9800 XT.
The RADEON 9800 XT takes its revenge in the “eye candy” mode of the fourth test, but this cannot alter the overall picture: the GeForce 6600 GT is either faster or equal to ATI’s card in a majority of tests and quite deservedly obtains a higher total score.
There’s a negligible difference in the 3DMark05 results of the cards we’re interested in. Let’s see where this comes from.
The first test of 3DMark05’s looks like a regular 3D shooter, but with more complex graphics than in real shooters. There’s a single frame-per-second of difference between the GeForce 6600 GT AGP and the RADEON 9800 XT, but with the absolute speeds being about 8-12fps this amounts to about 10 percent in favor of ATI’s solution.
The cards are equals in 1024x768 resolution of the “eye candy” mode, but we can’t learn anything about higher display modes: 3DMark05 doesn’t support full-screen anti-aliasing in high resolutions for graphics cards with 128 megabytes of memory.
Probably because of its higher efficiency with shadows the GeForce 6600 GT is better in the second game test which resembles some kind of role-play game.
The two mainstream solutions are again peers in the “eye candy” mode.
The third test can hardly be classified as belonging to a definite genre, but we know there’s a number of sophisticated pixel shaders here. The GeForce 6600 GT manages to keep abreast of the RADEON 9800 XT in the first two resolutions, but falls back in 1600x1200.
The load on the memory bus being higher with FSAA and anisotropic filtering enabled, the GeForce 6600 GT is still the same 10 percent behind the RADEON 9800 XT, but one could say there’s near parity between these two competing solutions from the graphics hardware mainstream in 3DMak05.
The AGP version of the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT is undoubtedly a success. Having performed a simple modernization, NVIDIA has got an excellent mainstream graphics card which outperforms last-generation solutions of the same class, like the RADEON 9800 XT and PRO, not to mention the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra.
Besides its excellent performance, the GeForce 6600 GT AGP features all the technologies peculiar to the whole GeForce 6 family. Thus, this is the only mass product with the AGP interface to support version 3.0 pixel and vertex shaders (Shader Model 3.0). Don’t also forget the PureVideo technology – the card carries NVIDIA’s second-generation video processor to unload the CPU during video playback, especially with the HDTV format.
As for the performance of the new graphics card, take a look at the following diagram:
Despite its simple design and 128-bit memory bus, the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT AGP makes an excellent showing in one of the most popular resolutions, 1280x1024. The more expensive, complex and hot RADEON 9800 XT is lagging behind in almost every test. The GeForce FX 5950 Ultra is no competitor to the GeForce 6600 GT AGP: the NV4x architecture is evidently superior to the NV3x.
The GeForce 6600 GT AGP also feels at ease when full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled, save for those cases when the load on the graphics memory is so high that the 128-bit width of the bus becomes too narrow. The bottlenecking effect of the 128-bit bus is especially felt in 1600x1200 resolution, but that’s not very critical since you are unlikely to have a playable frame rate in modern games turning on FSAA + anisotropic filtering in this resolution. The GeForce 6600 GT AGP is a mainstream graphics card after all, so don’t ask for the impossible from it.
At the time of our writing this, the GeForce 6600 GT AGP was already selling freely. According to PriceWatch.com, it’s going to cost you about $200-250 depending on the manufacturer, while the price of the RADEON 9800 XT is $275 and more. You can also have a RADEON 9800 PRO for $215, but its performance is lower than that of the new GeForce.
AGP versions of the RADEON X700- or RADEON X800-series graphics processing units produced using 0.11 micron process technology would make a good alternative to the GeForce 6600 GT AGP, but currently such GPUs only exist in PCI Express flavours, although the converter called ATI Rialto is already being made and tested by the manufacturers of graphics cards. So we’re expecting new AGP products from ATI any time now, but until their arrival the GeForce 6600 GT AGP remains the only mainstream graphics card with new-generation architecture. Considering its relatively low price and excellent performance we recommend it for your consideration – it’s an excellent buy, free from any obvious drawbacks.
Highs:
Lows: