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Reviews Arrive For nVidia GeForce 6600GT AGP

Posted by timothy on from the if-this-is-cheap-I'll-take-the-lobster dept.

bhtooefr writes "The Tech Report got their hands on a reference board of the nV 6600GT AGP, and did some benchmarks. Interestingly, even with a slower memory clock on the AGP card, it was FASTER in some benchmarks than the PCI-E card. Tests performed were: Doom 3, CS:Source, Far Cry, 3DMark05, Rome: Total War, and Xpand Rally (the last two tested with FRAPS)." pacmanfan contributes links to more reviews at Extreme Tech, Hard OCP and PC Perspective.

13 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Speed isn't the main reason for PCI-Express by DamienMcKenna · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The main reason I see to move to PCI Express is that it is a fully open standard by the PCI Consortium, rather than AGP which is an Intel trade secret. It is because of this that AMD had horrible AGP support for a long time, but with the open standard that is PCI-Express everyone wins.

    Plus you can daisy-chain multiple PCI-E cards for SLI, which is neat.

    Damien

    1. Re:Speed isn't the main reason for PCI-Express by AvitarX · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know how well SLI is supposed to work, but if I buy a $200 graphics card that plays all currently released games real well, and then in 18 months I buy a second used for $60. I have future proofed my system fairly well and saved $140 off of a brand new super fast card.

      I think it is a great idea.

      As for the two way communication, noone is going to use that mainstream until I upgrade again anyway, so I baught an AGP bord (I wanted a shuttle AMD 64 without waiting also).

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    2. Re:Speed isn't the main reason for PCI-Express by Mesaeus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Because they're stuck with hot, expensive, slow processors (in comparison to the Athlon64) which have reached their architecture limit in clock frequency. They already announced that there will be no real 4 Gigahertz P4. They dumped all development of the P4 line to go back to the Pentium M core (a continuation of the P3 in itself). In the meantime they need SOMETHING to shift processors, so they've simply thrown everything and the kitchen sink in new chipsets (which will also bring in some money), including DDR2, PCI Express and the new pinless chip format. Intel caught the video card makers by surprise by first switching to PCI-e much sooner than expected, and on top of that making it an agressive switch (they deliberately left out AGP compatibility so if you want to use DDR2 for example, you'll also need a PCI-e video card). This is why there are serious shortages of PCI-e cards, AND why the AMD chipset makers are racing to provide PCI-e themselves.

      Don't get me wrong, chipzilla won't go under in the next decade even if they keep up their current string of half assed and moronic decisions, but right now they're scared and PCI-e is simply one way to try to keep their market share by ways other than making their current stalled netburst architecture a little faster.

      For other examples of their panicky looting of their cache of speed enhancing tricks, see hyperthreading and the Xeon processors they sell as "Pentium 4 Extremely Expensive Edition"

  2. Need the bus bandwidth though by orthancstone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Mobo manufacturers still need to up the PCI-E bus bandwidth before we can daisy chain though. Right now there just isn't enough space for two cards, let alone two cards and other addons.

  3. 9800Pro vrs newer cards by Jumbo+Jimbo · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The benchmarks show the 9800 pro in the tables with the newer cards. The results aren't quite as impressive but it's still in the same league, and for half the price I think it will be the card of choice for a while.

    By the time thr prices drop there will be more information like this article on the differences / advantages of PCI-E over AGP. Think I'll wait until then before deciding on an upgrade.

  4. PCIe slower... Maybe its not mature yet? by Folmer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    AFAIR the first agp/4x/8x cards and boards were a bit slower then the former generation interface, so maybe we should let the technology mature for a bit...

    On the other hand Extremetech's review find the PCIe version much faster, so it might be a configuration issue...

  5. Re:... and yet by AndyBassTbn · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Couple the cost factor with the endless compatibility issues involved in making even half of these - admittedly impressive - game-grade video cards work with said games, and you have the reasons for the decline of PC gaming.

    I know that programming platforms such as DirectX, etc... were designed to unify SOMETHING among these cards, it just didn't work very well. (Insert M$ bashing here.)

    Furthermore, with all of the endless patches being required to even get a game to work, it simply becomes easier to pick up an XBox, PS2, or Gamecube for $100 or so that you KNOW will work once you get it hooked up.

    To put it another way - if you had to choose, sight unseen, between playing the latest game on a PC or a XBox, and the XBox ran you $150 plus the cost of the game, but the PC ran you $600, plus a souped up NVidia Video card for $200, plus another trip back to the store for more RAM for another $100, plus waiting three months for the patch to come out so your video card would work with it... need I go on? The choice seems clear...

    Yes, I know that those of us reading /. aren't as inclined to running into these problems, but to the average end-user, it's a no-brainer.

    --
    I hope the land around you yields, a crop like all the other fields, and then your waiting might make sense...
  6. SLI is where its at by BobRooney · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Even if the AGP version of the 6600GT outperforms the PCI express version slightly, there is still the value of the PCI ex version to function on the new SLI boards, whenever they come out.

    The 6600 cards are pretty reasonably priced, so picking up two of them and getting 180% performance of a single 6600GT AGP is pretty attractive and a sufficient reason to drool over the new NForce4 boards(for the AMD enthusiasts among us).

    The Current intel boards with SLI are considerably more expensive than the new NForce4 boards figure to be, so while there is still a few weeks till I can get my hands on one, I can't wait to get a pair of 6600GTs running in SLI mode with a respectable AMD 64 chip.

    1. Re:SLI is where its at by BobRooney · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The reason you would NOT opt for a single 6800GT is that the performance of a SINGLE 6800 is substantially less than DUAL 6600s. Maybe not an order of magnitude of difference, but the a reasonable estimate would certainly be at least a 50% jump over a stock, single 6800GT The 6600Gts are availalbe at ~180 on pricewatch btw

  7. Re:... and yet by smimi10 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    To put it another way - if you had to choose, sight unseen, between playing the latest game on a PC or a XBox, and the XBox ran you $150 plus the cost of the game, but the PC ran you $600, plus a souped up NVidia Video card for $200, plus another trip back to the store for more RAM for another $100, plus waiting three months for the patch to come out so your video card would work with it... need I go on? The choice seems clear...
    This is exactly the situation that I ran across. I spent a good amount of time building what was, at the time, a pretty good gaming PC. I put a nice nVidia MX-something in there (I think 200) and was fairly happy. For one game. Then my kids wanted to play other games, and for whatever reason, they wouldn't work correctly. So it was necessary for me to chase down patches, apply them, hope those patches didn't break whatever worked before, and cross my fingers.
    I decided after about the third iteration of that nonsense to go buy an XBOX. For us, works every time. I don't have to mess with it, and if you want to play a game, just play one. From this consumers perspective, I won't be setting up another PC to play high-end games. There's just no positive ROI there for me. As always, YMMV.
  8. Re:Is it worth it? by be-fan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Oh god, not this again. If you don't need anything faster, then don't fricking upgrade! In any case, the 250fps vs 300fps metric is just bad. SolidEdge runs at 10fps on my GeForce4 MX440, if I'm lucky. The limit for comfortable interactive modeling is about 5-10fps. That means I can't strech the detail on my model too far without killing my graphics card. If a $200 GeForce6600 allows me to use two or three times the detail, and still run at 10fps, I'm a happy camper.

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  9. Not exactly surprising by overshoot · · Score: 5, Interesting
    PCI-Express reflects Intel's continuing obsession with bandwidth at the expense of latency. An AGP channel is inherently much lower latency than a PCIe channel regardless of how many PCIe lanes you may throw at it.

    Unfortunately for the PCIe users (and I am one, the new box that $EMPLOYER got me uses PCIe video) graphics are quite sensitive to latency.

    I'm one of the SPICE trolls at $EMPLOYER who developed the I/O stuff for both AGP and PCIe. For what it's worth, I won't be switching to PCIe until it looks like I don't have a choice.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  10. Re:Is it worth it? by leonbev · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you're lucky, you MIGHT be able to run Doom 3 or Half Life 2 at 25 fps on that card, but only if you set the screen resolution to 640x480 and turn off ALL the eye candy. At that point, however, you might as well just stick with Minesweeper or Solitare.

    That said, I'm also confused why this article was labeled as "IT". The GeForce 6600 GT is a gamers card, not a business one. Although it would probably do a good job with CAD work or video editing, that really isn't what it was designed for.