Slashdot Mirror
Nvidia 6600 Series Examined
DrunkenTerror writes "Yesterday at QuakeCon, Nvidia debuted their new affordable GPU mentioned a few days ago on Slashdot. Dubbed the GeForce 6600 and 6600 GT, they differ from their higher-end brethren by having only 8 pixel pipes (unlike the 12 & 16 of the 6800 line), and appear to be limited to 128MB of RAM. Both GPUs support Shader Model 3.0. The 6600 GT sports fast GDDR3 RAM, while the 6600 appears to use plain-jane DDR. The GT also supports the oft-recently-discussed SLI, which could 'enable millions of users to experience the power of two GPUs in their system.' The best part, however, may be the price/performance. With a suggested street price of US$199, the 6600 GT runs at a steady 42 FPS in Doom 3, at high-quality 1600*1200." Reader aceh0 adds a few links: "Nvidia is announcing their NV4x Sub $200 Level graphics hardware today with the GeForce 6600 Series. The 6600 Series is feature complete with the 6800s and the differences come in the number of pipelines and memory configuration. SLI has trickled down to the 6600GT as well. Coverage is available at Neoseeker, Tech Report and PC Perspective as well as other sites."
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/2004080 6105201.html
"GeForce 6600 GT cards come with a 500 MHz clock and memory rate, 128-bit (GDDR3, 128 MB) and will cost $200-230, GeForce 6600 with 128-bit bus (GDDR, 128 MB) will cost $150. According to preliminary results and unconfirmed tests GeForce 6600 GT performs 20% better than RADEON 9800XT. "
TruePunk | Games
Now we just need a motherboard with 2 PCIe 16X slots. Some of Intel's new server-class motherboards have it but they cost around $500.
It is limited to 256MB, but most manufactures will be shipping 128mb versions.
It should be noted that these cards will initially only arrive with PCI Express support. Given the fact that most people have only AGP ports, this is a barrier to adoption. It has been reported that AGP versions will follow.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Without mentioning system specs, this is a pointless post. Are we talking some guys coming from 800MHz P3s or do y'all have 2.4GHz machines?
I'd suspect that your original CPU was somewhat lacking; 2-2.5GHz seems to be the the low end of what you can get away with for a respectable gaming machine these days. Once you reach this point, you're going to see a big difference jumping from your 5200 to a 5900.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
there's a chart on this page. the NV43 is a discrete chip with a different manufacturing process and a vastly different transistor count. the entire 6800 series is based on the NV40 core so the ability to mod it may be feasible.