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Reviews Arrive For nVidia GeForce 6600GT AGP
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.
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
Just when I break down and buy a Geforce FX5900XT, they come out with an AGP version of the 6600.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
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.
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.
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...
>Anyone else wonder why PC gaming is dying off?
Yeah, I bet that's exactly what ID and Valve are thinking right now. And Blizzard. And SOE (allright, I also wish they were dead).
---- Take the Space Quiz!
They got "Rome: Total War" to run? Wow!
Lets not forget AnandTech's review either http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2277
I think this card is a great one, but it looks like most store are marking it up too much. I think it should retail for around $200, but the cheapest I have found it is $220 with most store on the web hovering around $250. This card needs to be at $200 since vanilla 6800s can be found for $250. I'm looking for a new card myself, and this is definetly on the top of my list. The only thing holding me back is the possibility that I might be able to get a 9800 Pro for $150 from a friend.
SIGFAULT
A video card that will easily play Doom3 and HL2 and cost around $200. Of course this card has been out for awhile...but few people have a PCI-e board (Now it's a viable AGP upgrade).
Also worth noting is that the 6600 offers full support for Shader Model 3.0 and DirectX 9.0C, ATI does not currently offer support for this yet.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Couple the cost factor with the endless compatibility issues involved in making even half of these - admittedly impressive - game-grade video cards work with said games, and you have the reasons for the decline of PC gaming.
/. aren't as inclined to running into these problems, but to the average end-user, it's a no-brainer.
I know that programming platforms such as DirectX, etc... were designed to unify SOMETHING among these cards, it just didn't work very well. (Insert M$ 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
I hope the land around you yields, a crop like all the other fields, and then your waiting might make sense...
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.
IIRC, the Xbox uses a slightly detuned GeForce3 GPU. Go find some GeForce3 benchmarks and see how they compare, and I bet the performance gap between the GF3 and the slowest card there is much larger than between any of the cards they tested.
There's no way the Xbox could run any of those games at the high (1024x768+) resolutions that they use in these tests...the relatively slow CPU would be a problem as well. If you want higher quality, a PC is the way to go.
Quick response:
- 250 fps average would mean that even under heavy load the frame rate would be acceptable.
- When new cards are released, older cards generally drop in price.
- TV runs at 30 fps (actually it's something like 29.97), not 25.
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
I purchased a AGP 6800 for my gaming box, and haven't been disappointed yet. I haven't tried it under RedHat yet, I'm still trying to decide if I want to upgrade to FC3 or not. As long as it plays UT 2004 with everything cranked under XP and RedHat, I'll be a happy camper. I'd love to pick up a PCI Express based motherboard, but still nothing out for my 64 yet.
rm -rf
Concider this. I need a computer to do my job. It is a buisness expense. I write it off on my taxes. I build a new computer every july. I always build it on 3-4 month old technology (last july, i875p board p4 3.2ghz and 9800 pro) This july will be an amd64. I have never upgraded a pci, in fact when I sell my old pc's off they usually got another 1-2 years of video gamming without upgrades in them. Plus my return on investment is great. I spend about 1100 on a good pc. I usually get about 800-900 for the pc when I sell it. That makes the cost of my pc about 200.00. So, can I buy an play station 2, do my job on it (software development), browse the internet, play video games, use a keyboard and mouse, watch dvd's, burn dvd's and cdr's, Learn new operating systems with multiple partitions/hard drives, and keep myself on the edge of technology so my skills will be desireable for under 200.00? Oh yea, its got to be a tax write off too. ** Disclaimer, I own a ps2, psx, gameboy advanced, xbox, and gamecube. I bought the ps2 and xbox when I needed dvd players for my tv (hey why not), got the gamecube for christmas from my girlfriend, had the psx for years, and bought the gameboy for flights. I still play most of my games on the pc.
However, PC gaming offers much more flexibility. If a console game has "broken" features, it's stuck without being able to patch. That's an advantage PC games (although that may be used as an excuse to rush products out the door to make a deadline and just patch it later). PC gaming isn't on a decline, with the newer generations becoming more computer smart, the market will swell steadily.
Gah forgot to choose plain old text....
It seems Nvidia has been pushing their PCI-E cards, which haven't really found any foothold in the market. Who wants to buy a new motherboard for a few extra frames per second?
If you want performance without paying $400+ for something like the 6800/x800, the 6600 is for you. This is the card us cheap-thrill monkeys have been drooling over. The only bad thing I can say about this card, is that it hasn't come out sooner - Half Life 2 is running mighty poorly on my Ti4200.
Nvidia really would've cleaned up had they released this prior to HL2 release.
Interesting to note that Toms hasn't posted on this yet. I wonder how long they will take to get it to the review done to their satisfaction? Good for them.
Your other points are valid, but this only holds true in NTSC-land AFAIK. PAL uses 25/50iHz. Besides, you should have pointed out that most of the time, you don't play games on the TV but on the PC monitor which should be set to at least 75Hz everywhere (unless you got a TFT/LCD in which case 60Hz is good enough for everyone).
Money for nothing, pix for free
where do I get that job. I'd like to do some professional 'testing' myself...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
To an extent, that's true. I have a Geforce FX5200 and i can still play Doom 3 (of course, not at the highest setting). But c'mon, nobody ever said the latest and greatest graphics card is a necessity.
OTOH, I used to have a TNT2 and palyed Warcraft III on it. It ran rather smoothly, and I thought all was good. Until I upgraded to the Geforce FX5200. The difference was pleasantly surprising. Hell, even the text in the chat-screen was so much more cripser and clearer.
So I guess for most users, it really isn't that big of a deal to get the latest card. But when you're gaming, it makes all the difference. Truly, how many of us do intensive graphics programming as a hobby anyway? They have specialized cards for professional use (CAD, etc..)...
That, my friend, is a prime example of America centric thinking. The TV signal in a good sized chunk of the world (Europe, Australia, parts of Asia) is whats known as PAL, rather than the US NTSC system.
While you are correct in saying that NTSC runs at slightly off 30 fps, PAL runs at 25, and the grandparent may well have been posting from somewhere outside of the US (crazy as it sounds, such places do exist!) and would therefore have been accurate.
TV in the US (NTSC) is at 59.94 fields per second interlaced, so it is equivalent to 29.97 frames per second. However, in Europe TV (PAL) is 50 fields per second interlaced, or 25 frames per second. The reason for the difference is the difference in the mains AC frequency on opposite sides of the pond. (The 60/59.94 disparity is due to a complication of colour TV). This has annoying consequences when transferring video, as conversion is required (also in terms of number of lines). Cinema film tends to run at 24 full frames per second, just to make things a little more complicated. Here is a comparison of TV formats.
I'm not a statistician, but i'd put money on more games being played on a TV than a monitor these days, what with the total world domination of Playstation and all...
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.
Actually, I believe the way we percieve frames on TV, and on a PC screen are completely different. On a typical TV frame, the frame records motion. If you extract just one frame and look at it, you can see that the moving objects are blurred. 24-25 frames is actually what most *film* is recorded at. Movie films, I think, are still recorded at 24fps, that number was chosen because of a very old trade-off between running the film at high speed to get more frames, and running it at a low enough speed to stop the film from tearing.
On computers, you can most definitely tell the difference between, say 60fps and 100fps, because a frame does not record motion. One frame is just a statically rendered shot. But above that, you wouldn't notice too much difference.
That said, the actual reasons for upgrading your card wont be the FPS. It will usually be running it at a decent FPS while still keeping the newer features like Antialiasing, Pixelshading, etc turned on. Many newer games (DX 9.0+) rely on stuff like this to get anything done. Notice the detailed dynamic shadows in the D3 screens? Your GF4MX420 can't handle those very well I suppose?
But hey, I own a GF4MX440SE, and between putting up with the high costs of a new card and all the people who say I've actually bought a hidden GF2GTS, I'd choose the cheaper alternative any day.
StrayByte.Net
am I the only geek who does NOT play video/computergames?
while I love seeing hardware reviews, there has GOT to be another way to test video cards other than playing games. fps and all the other game-centric metrics are completely useless to me.
what other metrics can be applied to video cards?
the history of the world
Is there any area of IT that actually requires the best available graphics card?
Yes there is. It is called recreation and fun time.
Otherwise, all most people need is a 32MB on board graphics card. No big deal.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
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...
The rate at which new cards come out is ridiculous.
I'm happy with my nVidia GeForce 420 MX. I mean,
What frame rates do you get in Doom 3?
Yeah, I figured as much.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I use PAL you insensitive clod! ;-)
I have an athlon 2600+ which was a great purchase.
We all know that more cpu power isn't really needed right now. Because of this the idea of buying a new system to upgrade a graphics board seems silly, I have a 9000 pro which still runs everything quite well but could use an upgrade.
So my options are to spend $300 cnd on a 9800 pro or 6800? Not the greatest options.
I have the money but I'd rather not, plus if I'm going to buy such a high end card it really sucks I won't be able to put it into my next system.
Most people are probably looking at the 939 platform as their next upgrade.
As far as CPU's go, dual core is hitting in about a year. That's a significant upgrade, coupled with 64bit.
So I mainly need a card to ease my current system out but which will have linux compatibility once it becomes my server, for that Nvidia is the best and a high end card won't do.
Basically for anyone who wants to put another card in their computer this is the way to go. This is the perfect card and the fact that it was pciE only really really sucked.
On the other hand both ATI and Nvidia should be looking at a new product cycle in febuary-april so you might want to hold out. But I get the feeling it'll be a 5800-5900 9800 pro to xt type cycle not a 8500 to 9700 type cycle.
Partially due to no new technology like AA or DX9 coming out in the near future.
The 8 pixel pipelines kinda hurts whereas the 6800 can have all 16 unlocked but that doesn't make these cards any less powerful and there should be plenty of power here till a pciE upgrade is required.
splutter...spit....curse...
Please tell me with a NVidia card?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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,
Fast low latency chipset?
Probably biggest reason for AGP version to beat the PCI-E version
Drivers?
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Well, WoW and EQ[1|2] are on the pc because no one wants to sit in front of the tv with a keyboard in their lap.
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.
There's no way the Xbox could run any of those games at the high (1024x768+) resolutions that they use in these tests...the relatively slow CPU would be a problem as well. If you want higher quality, a PC is the way to go.
the funny thing is - pc games now are way ahead of consoles in visuals and sound. even on GeForce FX 5200 game visuals blows consoles out of the water. pc gaming rocks!
That said, even with all my research, I've still made bad choices. When I built my i875p I went with a giga-byte board because everything I read said it was the best board on the market for i875p. Well 3 RMA's later I abandoned it and went with an intel board. My machine has been rock solid ever after (I later found on the giga-byte board was just really really picky on ram, it didnt' matter on the timings even though I played with those forver).
After that experiance, I have decided to use proven hardware over extreame hardware. If intel can get their new 64bit cpu's to market well before july (before feb or march) That will be enough time for the market to beta test their product and make most of the issues known.
Each one is a learning exp. I learn what to do and what not to do. For example, I didn't take the claims of p4's heat and speed issues seriously. When I built my girlfriends pc recently (amd xp 3200) with similar hardware (although video card is a 5900) It runs slightly faster in benchmarks in some area's, and runs a decent amount cooler. Video performance isn't as good with the 5900, but she's not a big gamer.
But like anything, you never know until you try it. You can read about all the hardware all you want, but until you build a box, you have no idea who well it is going to perform.
That's PCI Express not PCI-X.
Not to mention the console trolls who claim playing FPSs with a gamepad is on par or superior to playing with mouse+keyboard.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
I play warcraft3 on an ATI Rage Mobility M1. Sure, the settings are all on low. But it's playable, and still fun. I don't play online or anything though. aaaanyway....
I'm about to build a new computer, and the best graphics card isn't a neccesity, but it's in the top 3 or 4 things. I'd like something that I don't have to replace for a few years. In the past, i've upgraded RAM and video cards before upgrading CPU and mobo. It seems to keep the cycle less painfull.
I was thinking about PCIe since i didn't know when the AGP version of 6600 would be out. Maybe I'll build the system with a cheapo vid card, or use a mobo with onboard video until this comes out and the price stabalizes. . *shrug*
The parent is spot-on. Current AGP 8x bandwidth is 8x(266*8, 2128MB/sec), but the performance difference between 4x(266*4, 1064MB/sec) and 8x is negligable(around a percent, within experimental error). Considering that x1 PCIe is 250MB/sec, PCIe and AGP are effectively running at the same speed given the same multiplier. If you take in to consideration that we just said that we aren't making use of anything past AGP 4x yet, it's a logical assumption that PCIe x4 should also be enough, and that x8 would be enough for the next generation of cards that would somehow need the doubled bandwidth.
But getting back to the point, the current PCIe graphics standard is x16, which at 4GB/sec(and this is each way, BTW - PCIe is full duplex, AGP is half) is far more than we need. The current solution of dividing up the 16 lanes from that single slot in to 2 groups of 8 lanes for 2 PCIe x8 slots(though using an x16 connector for power issues) still results in each card recieving more bandwidth than it can effectively use. With a single x16 slot, PCIe is future-proof enough that bandwidth won't be an issue for some long period of time, and than the x8 SLI solution won't be bandwidth limited for some shorter, but still long enough period of time that it's not going to be a realistic issue until at least the 3rd or 4th generation PCIe motherboard chipsets are released, at which point they can be built with more lanes.
indeed. WASD+mouse forever :-)
and
I still play most of my games on the pc.
Does not go over well with the IRS.
6 frames per second in The Sims 2, at least while you're moving the camera. Otherwise 160 FPS, when the camera is set. :)
Check the topic and then answer me if the nVidia GeForce 6600GT AGP graphics card fits in a Playstation. :-P
Money for nothing, pix for free
Are you done tossing each other off?
What you're missing however, is that newer games are using substantially more RAM to introduce higher quality textures, and more textures overall, thereby improving the visual image.
They're also making more use of the newer shaders. The facial expressions in HL2 and env-mapped water and caustics from that and other games don't happen magically by themselves.
The bottom line is you'll get better visal quality in a newer game using a newer card. This doesn't mean an older card won't play it, but the visual component of the experience isn't going to be as good.
Most 3D Software (games especially, and other visualization-heavy portions of the industry, including film and CAD) is generally developed on and targeted at the best card available at the time of developement. The best card however will not be this one, as this is a midrange gamer card from the most recent generation.
The key difference between a Programmer and a Senior Programmer is that one of them is Mexican.
That said, I'm also confused why this article was labeled as "IT".
It is listed under games as well.
Actually, if you read the article, you would see that the NV43 chipset that the 6600 uses is a native PCI Express chip, and they use a bridge chip to make an AGP version of the card. This is why PCI-E versions of the 6600 have been out for a while, but the AGP version just became available today.
From the first page of the article:
"The NV43, however, already has a built-in PCI Express interface, so for the AGP version of the GeForce 6600 GT, NVIDIA is turning the HSI chip around and using it to bridge between the PCI-E graphics chip and an AGP motherboard."
25 fps might be enough for TV, but it's sure as hell not enough for game. Try running the same game limiting it to 25 fps, 50 fps and 75 fps and try telling me with a straight face that you are not seeing any difference.
Remember the 6600 is measured in frames per seconds rather than characters per second.
You're right about IT, I can often do with just a 6600 instead of the 6800 Ultra.
However, if you need to downgrade (MX420 is just too fast!). I've got some Trio and Oak boards. They'll even do 8-bitplanes at 800x600! Hope that doesn't get you too excited.
As I plan on acquiring HL2 and playing on my Ti4200. It just annoys me to no end that you can buy a really fast cpu, a nice big hard drive, or many other quality computer items for ~100 but when it comes to video cards your always looking at $175-$200 for anything that will last a few years.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
You got it backwards, dude. The card in this review speaks PCIe, that's why there's a second chip in there, it's the PCIe <-> AGP bridge. :)
And bake me a pie while you're at it!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I have had an Nvidia card for several years, they are generally a good company (or at least better than ATI in my opinion). Even though their drivers are not open source I still enjoy the fact they support linux, and I will continue to purchase from them.
All I want for Christmas is an Nvidia AGP 6600 GT.
P.S. I've been very good this year!
While this bodes good news for those with AGP only systems, does anyone remember when the launch of the 6600 GT PCIe was? A few months ago. Yet, even today, is it available in quantites so that no one has to worry about not getting one? No.
Essentially, all 'launches', as many people call them, are more or less paper launches, with the actual release of the hardware a few months later. This may be good from the company's perspective, but for the regular consumer, what difference does it make that there was a paper launch and when the product is actually available?
Even with some stores in my local area, and also the big chains as well, I still can't get a 6800 or a X800 Pro, and even in the place that do, they are way too expensive for the ordinary person.
I have also noticed that time difference between product launches and paper launches are getting longer and longer.
i doubt this will have much of an effect on the gradual phasing out of agp... pcie has numerous benefits and the performance will be unleashed once software developers catch up
Get your torrents...