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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."
I.E. I noticed a bigger jump in performance by upgrading my mainboard, cpu, and memory while retaining my relatively mediocre (but fully DirectX 9 compliant) graphics card, whereas my friend who had a similar configuration spent his cash on the latest Nvidia and didn't seem to come out significantly ahead.
If you can afford all of the above, I suppose this is the card for you (hell get two and run them together). But too often gamers focus on the graphics to the overall detriment of their performance.
which will need to have a true GPU in order to run it's rendering engine much like Mac. If NVIDIA doesn't have a low end GPU it wouldn't get as big a part of the market.
US$199, the 6600 GT runs at a steady 42 FPS in Doom 3, at high-quality 1600*1200
In the end, regardless of what memory is being used, and what technologies, if I can play the newest game at its highest level of graphics at 42fps, then I'm a happy gamer, especially when the price is under $200 (USD).
OK glad I got that off my chest. Now, I run Linux and the only real gaming I do is in NeveWinter Nights. Maybe because I do not do any First Person Shooter / Real time gaming I do not notice a problem, but all my computers run the $49.00 special, Geforce card. I really like Geforce Cards. I love Nvidias support for Linux. I appreciate all you hard core gamers buying the new cards so they keep dropping the price on the other cards. I just can't get enthusiastic over a new video card when the ones I have a perofrming adequately.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Faster cards for gamers may be nice, but what I'm really interested in is a better card for my MythTV box. My main concern is having MPEG decoding for HDTV output and minimal heat output (no fans).
I seem to recall nVidia promising better MPEG/HDTV support in there upcoming cards. Will the low-end of this generation be fanless?
As nifty as the card sounds, the hype of SLI might be just that - as the Tech Report preview points out, there aren't any sub-$500 motherboards currently the sport dual PCI-Express slots. For people looking to incrementally upgrade, they'll have to factor in needed a new motherboard as well. We can only hope an "nForce3.5" chipset with dual PCI-Express slots and a sane price point shows up in tandem with the new cards...
Don't quote me on this, but from the way it sounds the technology involved has changed so much that the old drivers will not work properly (though they may function somewhat).... Waiting for new drivers would be the best idea, price will go down, and will save you some cash on aspirin.
TruePunk | Games
No, it will not work on Windows, for the same reason I can't go out and buy any video card I want for my G5. The DVI connections on the card are the newest version of the DVI spec. Just wait a little longer, and you'll be able to get a PC video card that supports Apple's 30" monitors.
And how many people are disturbed by this on their 85Hz to 110Hz vertical refresh monitors? More than should be, I'll bet.
Standard movies only run at 24fps, and American television is only a true 30fps (1/2 of the interlaced frame is written every 1/60 of a second). Demanding frame rates much above those seems an absurd form of posturing.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Wouldn't we -- and they -- have been better off if they just punched out larger quanitites of the higher-end chips at less cost?
No, neither you nor they would be better off. Companies like nVidia and ATI rely on the quick infusion of lots of cash from the early adopters to fund R&D on better GPU's. If they sold their best chips at the same cost as an FX5200, funding for innovating these great chips would dry up and you'd have to wait much longer for new designs and better performance.
The best way to get these companies to reduce their costs is simply not to buy their equipment. The laws of supply and demand will naturally produce an equilibrium in which they sell their products at a price point that maximizes their own profit. If their best cards are $500, then you can be assured that there are enough people out there willing to pay $500 to make it more profitable for them to sell it for that price than for $499, $250, $120, or $60. If you aren't one of those people willing to pay $500, then either (a) produce your own damn GPU or (b) wait for the prices to come down. Either way, stop whining.
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Of course, ATI can't write an OpenGL ICD to save their lives. Actually, their drivers are buggy in general.
I'll admit that ATI seems to have better technology. But drivers are everything. EVERYTHING. And Nvidia wins that battle, hands down.
"I dunno, if you're gonna spend money on a graphics card, might as well go balls-out with this one."
Too bad that the majority of gamers are not in the position to do anything like that. I mean how likely is it that everyone has $350 to blow on a gpu? Not bloody likely is the reality. At that price and above your talking about a small percentage of gamers. The rest as always will be sticking with way sub $200 cards where gpu vendors continue to make their bread and butter.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
The simplest example I give to people who say '24fps is enough' is to tell them to wave their mouse cursor around onscreen as fast as they can. The cursor image is being updated at at least 30fps (more like 60fps), yet you can still see discrete cursor images with gaps between them as opposed to one smoothly-moving cursor.