Reference Board Examination
Click for a bigger version
Click for a bigger version
As you can see, it's very faithful in appearance to the press pictures issued for the paper launch at Quakecon. It's a very small PCB, harking back to the good old days of the GeForce2. Being PCI Express (natively, as you'll see soon) it doesn't need an external power source, instead drawing all its power from the PEG16X slot.
Click for a bigger version
You can see the SLI connector on the top left of the board. The PCB only has silkscreen space for four DRAM devices, all four occupied on the reference board by 32MB Samsung K4J55323QF GDDR3 DRAMs. The GC20 variant is good for 1000MHz at default voltage without any cooling and NVIDIA run it at exactly that speed.
The board doesn't need any extra power, drawing all its power from the PCI Express slot. AGP versions of 6600 GT will very likely require an external connector.
The board is comes specced with the usual DVI, VGA and S-Video connectors. In the reference board's case, it also has a Philips SAA711HL video capture processor for full VIVO input from NTSC, PAL and SECAM video sources, via the hybrid S-Video connector. There's possibility for dual DVI using a second board-mounted TMDS but no board partners have announced a dual DVI 6600 GT product as yet.
The cooler is single-slot and the fan is variable speed, the driver adjusting it between three states depending on GPU and ambient temperature. The fan can either be off, at medium power or at full power, giving the most cooling performance possible. The cooler is aluminium, the fan plastic. The fan sits on a ballbearing mount, as visible through the center of the fan assembly.
Noise-wise, the 6600 GT fan, even at full speed, doesn't trouble the senses. It's audible, sure, but it's nothing that'll give you nightmarish flashbacks to NV30 and the famous GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. Quiet and unobtrusive are the key words.
