Introduction
XFX GeForce 6600 DDR2 256MB PCIe
We try to cover a broad a range as possible when it comes to graphics card reviewing. We're sure that most readers would jump at the chance of owning a PC that contained SLI'd GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB cards. For most, though, that kind of specification and associated review is useful in understanding where cutting-edge technology currently is at, but the pure cost of ownership makes it financially unjustifiable. It's an obvious fact that the lower down the GPU scale you go, the more potential customers you can tempt with your wares. That's why both ATI and NVIDIA, in terms of discrete graphics cards, fully understand that the £300+ market is a relative niche, useful for highlighting performance that will become available in the midrange sector as the trickle-down effect, over time, takes its course.
What both companies also appreciate is the need to have a well-stocked and, just as importantly, a well-defined range of products from, say, £30-£150. If moving GPUs is your business, there can be no obvious gaps. That becomes problematic as new SKUs are launched that supercede older ones, and it's a constant case of product repositioning and price cutting. Now take NVIDIA's current GPU range from between £60-£120. There's the GeForce 6600 DDR1 at the lower end of the scale and GeForce 6600 GT at the upper end. However, there's a reasonably large performance gap between the two that was just begging to be filled with another model.
That's what we have in review for today. NVIDIA and its partners have decided to plug this gap by releasing the GeForce 6600 DDR2 SKU, which attempts to smooth the transition between current products. Employing DDR2 memory and using established technology with aggressive pricing, it's got the basic ingredients to do well. Our look today isn't at a reference model, as you might expect, but at a shipping, retail package from one of NVIDIA's key partners. XFX brings to the GeForce 6600 DDR2 table its customary pre-overclocked core and decent bundle. Read on to find out how it matches up against the ATI RADEON X1300 range and NVIDIA's very own GeForce 6600 GT.
Card appearance and thoughts
Let's take reference models as a starting point and ascertain why the GeForce 6600 DDR2 SKU was a much-needed product. Right now, a vanilla GeForce 6600 card clocks in at 350MHz core and 500-550MHz memory, available in either 128MB or 256MB GDDR1-equipped framebuffer flavours. Starting prices of around £60 and finishing off at around £80 for a deluxe model with all the trimmings, it's a decent enough GPU in its own right. The next iteration of current NVIDIA GPU is the GeForce 6600 GT. It carries on over all the underlying architecture found on the GeForce 6600 but, and it's a big one, ramps up core speed to 500MHz and utilises GDDR3 memory that's run at 900MHz upwards (usually 1GHz). Now, with the same architecture, pure clock-speed differential between the two 6600-series GPUs is, really, too large. Add to this the fact that 128MB-equipped GeForce 6600 GTs start at £100 and you can appreciate just why there's a need for an interim product, and that product, NVIDIA's decided, is a GeForce 6600 core running at 350MHz and GDDR2 memory at 800MHz.
XFX has been one of the first manufacturers to release an NVIDIA GeForce 6600 DDR2 retail card and much like previous XFX cards, its version runs with a pre-overclocked core at 400MHz. As mentioned, reference GeForce 6600 designs will ship at 350MHz, but we expect other card partners to follow XFX's lead and release their own SKUs are varying speeds.
The card design is pretty much what you'd expect from an £80 offering. Only a small-ish cooler is needed to keep the NV43 core humming along at 400MHz. Regular GeForce 6600 GTs' cores run at 500MHz upwards, so they've got, ceteris paribus, 25% extra fillrate power. Of course, they also cost around £25 for a 128MB frambuffer-equipped model, too. The aluminium heatsink's fan, although small and spinning at relatively high RPM, doesn't have that annoying pitch that's associated with many low-end cards. It's patently obvious that XFX, and most likely all card partners who produce GeForce 6600 DDR2 cards for that matter, have a keen eye on overall cost, and engineering individual, quieter heatsink/fan assemblies simply isn't viable when, literally, every penny saved counts. Interestingly, XFX has a few GeForce 6600 DDR2 variants in its lineup, including a low-profile, passively-cooled
design that would be perfect for the HTPC crowd. A
look under the heatsink holds no surprises.
Leading on from this actively-cooled model, the basic heatsink, entirely appropriate for a budget card, doesn't cover the GDDR2 RAM chips that line the upper and right-hand sides. The type of memory chosen here is crucially important for this SKU, as that's how NVIDIA, in the main, will sandwich it between the regular GeForce 6600 that uses basic, comparatively slow GDDR1 chips and the erstwhile GeForce 6600 GT, replete with faster GDDR3 RAM. NVIDIA's pitching reference '6600 DDR2 cards' memory clock speed at an effective 800MHz, and XFX keeps the status quo by using 8 256MBit 2.5ns-rated chip from
Infineon. Doing the maths tells us that there's a total of 256MB (or, more correctly, 256MiB) memory on-board, although cards should also be available with 128MB framebuffers in the near future. So, in basic specification summary, you get an NV43 core chugging along at 400MHz that's allied to 256MB of GDDR2 memory, connected via a 128-bit interface, which runs at 800MHz. Performance, obviously, will fall between vanilla GeForce 6600 and 6600 GT cards, with extra-high resolution benchmarking results dependant upon the size of card framebuffer used.
Here you can see the GDDR2 DRAM arrangement a little more clearly. What's also clear is that, being a low-to-midrange card, a x16 PCI-Express slot provides enough juice for you not to need auxillary power; there's no 6-pin power connector that we've seen on all high-end boards of late. The very interface, PCIe, is flavour of the year, and we doubt that an bridged, AGP-equipped model will see the light of day anytime soon. In terms of overall
PCB size, XFX's card has the same dimensions as a reference ATI RADEON X1300 Pro 256MB card and both are a little smaller than an NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT.
Card partners can further differentiate their products from one another, especially in the sub-£100 sector, by adding various features. XFX has gone with a traditional single-link DVI, S-Video (video-out only), and HD15 set of connections on the backplate. Dual-DVI, for those of you who run two DVI-capable TFTs, would have been lovely, though, and is available on a different XFX GeForce 6600 DDR2 256MB
SKU. Take another look at this card and you'll note that there's no distinct SLI connector, the conduit that NVIDIA uses for inter-GPU connection. Does that mean no SLI possibility here? The answer is a no, because GeForce 6600 cards don't require external bridging. Two of these PCIe cards would work just fine in various SLI modes, and it's worth noting that SLI has been available for some time.
All of the action is contained on the upper side, and the back is, well, bare by comparison. There's also no temperature-monitoring ASIC on this model, although given the low-power core and basic design, heat shouldn't be an issue.
Presentation and bundle
XFX's distinctive packaging highlights the pertinent features, that is, a GeForce 6600 card that's equipped with 256MB of GDDR2 memory. Like all XFX graphics cards, this package carries a 2-year limited warranty and, as mentioned, is priced at around the £80 mark (including VAT, excluding delivery if you're purchasing from an e-tailer).
The bundle is actually pretty good. The basics are all there, including an S-Video extension cable and DVI dongle. The installation/software CD contained NVIDIA's ForceWare 77.77 driver set and, impressively, a full copy of Tenomichi's 3D Edit Silver v3, a 3D video-editing engine which incorporates a number of real-time shading effects that are run through the GPU.
We
reviewed a fairly early build of Tenomichi 3D Edit here
. There's also a number of demos and an XFX-branded version of Coolbits, the NVIDIA-based overclocking software that installs right into the control panel.
Also present in other XFX bundles and welcome to this one is a single-DVD version of Far Cry, the gorgeous-looking and extremely playable FPS game. Rounding off the package are a couple of manuals comprising of brief, multi-language and English-only versions. The latter does a reasonable job of illustrating hardware and software installation.
An impressive bundle in lieu of the £80 asking price.
System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| Systems |
Athlon 64 S939 PCI-Express System |
| Processor |
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ |
| Mainboard |
ABIT AX8 K8T890 |
| Memory |
1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200 XL |
Memory timings |
2-2-2-5 1T @ DDR400 |
| Graphics Card #1 |
XFX GeForce 6600 DDR2 256MB PCIe (400/800) |
| Graphics Card #2 |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB PCIe (500/1000) |
| Graphics Card #3 |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 (DDR1) 256MB PCIe (300/550) |
| Graphics Card #4 |
ATI RADEON X1300 Pro 256MB PCIe (600/800) |
Graphics Card #5 |
ATI RADEON X1300 256 MB PCIe (450/500) |
Disk Drive |
160GB Western Digital 160JB IDE |
| Monitor |
Dell 2001FP 20.1-inch TFT - 1600x1200 native resolution |
| BIOS Version |
BIOS 13 |
| Operating System |
Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Mainboard Software |
VIA Hyperion Pro v4.55 |
Software
NVIDIA ForceWare 81.85 for GeForce 6600 256MB and GeForce 6600 GT
ATI 8.173.2.3-050921a-027133C for ATI-based cards
Futuremark 3DMark05 Build 1.2.0 - AA and AF set via application
DOOM 3 (v1282) Timedemo 1 - AA and AF set via application
Far Cry v1.33 - custom HEXUS benchmark - AA and AF set via application
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.04 - custom HEXUS benchmark - AA and AF set via application
Notes
We'll be looking at the XFX GeForce 6600 DDR2 256MB card's performance against a 500MHz/1000MHz-clocked GeForce 6600 GT card that carries 128MB of onboard memory and retails at around £105. The combination of faster core and memory speeds but smaller framebuffer should provide some interesting results, especially as resolution and image enhancement are increased. We've also added in a vanilla GeForce 6600 256MB card (DDR1) and a couple of ATI RADEON X1300-based SKUs into the mix, and the trio can be considered to be direct competitors in terms of price, performance, and features.
We've not included the £105 ATI RADEON X800 GT 256MB SKU in the following benchmarks because it's a limited edition whose availability cannot be guaranteed in the long-term. ATI's main sub-£100 focus will centre around its X1300 range of GPUs, two of which we've benchmarked here.
In order to appreciate just what's at play here, a simple table lists the main features.
| Card |
XFX GeForce 6600 DDR2 256MB |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 256MB |
NVIDIA reference GeForce 6600 GT 128MB |
ATI RADEON X1300 Pro 256MB |
ATI RADEON X1300 256MB |
| Manufacturing process |
110nm |
110nm |
110nm |
90nm |
90nm |
| Interface/speed |
PCI-Express |
PCI-Express |
PCI-Express |
PCI-Express |
PCI-Express |
Onboard memory |
256MB |
256MB |
128MB |
256MB |
256MB |
Core speed |
400MHz |
300MHz |
500MHz |
600MHz |
450MHz |
Rendering pipelines |
8 |
8 |
8 |
4 |
4 |
Fillrate (multi-texturing) |
3.2GTexels/s |
2.4GTexels/s |
4GTexels/s |
2.4GTexels/s |
1.8GTexels/s |
Vertex shading units |
3 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
Shader Model |
3.0 |
3.0 |
3.0 |
3.0 |
3.0 |
Memory interface |
128-bit |
128-bit |
128-bit |
128-bit |
128-bit |
Memory speed |
800MHz |
550MHz |
1000MHz |
800MHz |
500MHz |
Memory bandwidth (max) |
12.8GB/s |
8.8GB/s |
16GB/s |
12.8GB/s |
8GB/s |
Average online price |
£80 |
£70 |
£105 |
£85 |
£65 |
As you can see, the XFX card sits inbetween the GeForce 6600 and 6600 GT SKUs, filling the gap, both in terms of price and performance, that has existed for a while. The interesting aspect to note will be just how it compares to the newest iteration of ATI's RADEON-based cards. Let's find out.
3DMark05 b1.2.0
Taking a look at 3DMark05 performance without any additional I.Q., we see that the DDR2-equipped GeForce 6600, albeit one with an overclocked core, benchmarks closer to a 'GT than to a vanilla GeForce 6600. Also note the benefits of having a 256MB framebuffer at the 1600x1200 test, which are enough for it to beat out the more-expensive 'GT.
Adding 2x FSAA and 4x anisotropic filtering, which is probably the optimum I.Q. settings when running GPU-intensive games on low-to-midrange graphics cards, the XFX GeForce 6600 DDR2 256MB generally ties with the ATI RADEON X1300 Pro 256MB and GeForce 6600 GT 128MB cards. Taking 3DMark05 as a reasonable barometer of D3D gaming performance, a score of 2,000 marks at 1280x1024 2x AA 4x AF, the target resolution and I.Q. settings, we feel, infers that the card will struggle at anything higher, and you may need to knock some of the quality settings.
DOOM 3
Running DOOM 3 in the good-looking high-quality mode, the XFX card returns a ~50FPS average at 1280x1024. That's enough to make a fast-paced FPS playable enough for the most part. Even 1600x1200 is reasonably smooth, with a little slowdown in frenetic sections. What's also telling is that this GeForce 6600 DDR2 card is twice as fast as the ATI RADEON X1300 Pro at 1600x1200.
Adding 2x FSAA and thinking again of the target resolution of 1280x1024, things begin to get a bit sticky. If FSAA is your cup of tea, we'd recommend the 1024x768 setting. Still, XFX's card is around 40% faster than the vanilla GeForce 6600 (DDR1) 256MB SKU.
Far Cry
The Far Cry test is the same one used on high-end cards, so it's an absolute measure. Once again, the 400/800-clocked XFX card produces decent framerates at 1280x1024 with in-game settings dialed up to very high (no HDR, however).
2x FSAA and 4x AF add too much of a burden on these cards, and anything above 1024x768 could be considered choppy. From a pure performance perspective, the GeForce 6600 DDR has the measure of ATI's RADEON X1300 Pro thus far, eclipsing it in every gaming test.
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, run with high-quality shadows and parallax mapping, hits the cards the hardest. As expected, the GeForce 6600 GT 128MB card is around 25% faster at the lower resolutions, and a smaller framebuffer doesn't count against it at 1600x1200.
The framerate situation only gets worse as we add-in 2x FSAA and 4x AF.
Overclocking tests
Overclocking
XFX has already increased the core frequency on its GeForce 660 DDR2 256MB model from the NVIDIA-prescribed 350MHz to 400MHz. The question then remained just how much higher would core and memory go? The answer was a wholly
impressive 535MHz core and 910MHz memory. Those clocks were achieved without any additional cooling directed at the card and reflected rock-solid stability, and the core speed is in excess of a stock-clocked GeForce 6600 GT's.
We re-ran DOOM 3 and Far Cry at 1280x1024 2x FSAA 4/8x AF to see the framerate benefits of the increased speeds.
The elevated clocks manage to pass default GeForce 6600 GT 128MB performance, just.
Far Cry scaling is a little different, although the benchmark results, visually, are indistinguishable from a GeForce 6600 GT 128MB's.
Final thoughts
The launch of the GeForce 6600 DDR2 SKU has filled the obvious performance gap that existed between present GeForce 6600 and '600 GT products. The latter, in most cases, benchmarked between 50-80% faster than a vanilla '6600, so the need for an interim GPU was obvious. NVIDIA has been able to bridge between its two low-to-midrange products by using a core clock that falls between the two and, tellingly, GDDR2 memory that provides the crucial extra bandwidth that was lacking from the 550MHz-rated GDDR1 RAM present on most GeForce 6600s. There's no technology barriers being broken here, obviously, but the introduction of the GeForce 6600 DDR2 can only be seen in a positive light.
XFX realises what a potent seller the DDR2-equipped GeForce 6600 can be, and has been one of the first card partners to release a retail model. Featuring a pre-overclocked core running at 400MHz and 256MB of GDDR2 memory chugging along at 800MHz, it makes a compelling case for those users who are currently looking for a PCIe-based graphics card at around the £80 mark, which is still £25 or so shy of GeForce 6600 GT 128MB pricing. The fact that the sample overclocked to near-GT levels is also pleasing, as is the decent bundle and 2-year warranty.
The extraneous competition currently comes from ATI's RADEON X1300 range of cards, and both the vanilla and Pro varieties, priced at similar levels to GeForce 6600 and 6600 DDR2, fall a little short if judged in 3D performance terms. The performance gap is most evident in OpenGL-based titles with the GeForce 6600 range of cards significantly faster.
In summary, then, XFX's GeForce 6600 DDR2 256MB card provides more-than decent performance for the £80 asking price. Add to this the high-quality bundle and immediate availability and we have little reservation in recommending it to gamers who are looking to upgrade to a PCI-Express card and want a fistful of change from £100.
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