System Setup and Notes
An NVIDIA PCI Express Mash-up
With ATI's PCI Express entrants in the same mid-range sector as the 6600-series barely days away (at least two of the range are, the XT may be delayed a little due it being a completely separate GPU class to the Pro and plain-X700 variants), I've saved comparison with any ATI boards in this article for the day X700 arrives, for better or worse. Not wishing to subject the X600, XT or otherwise, to the beating 6600 GT would hand to it, I instead rounded up NVIDIA's other PCI Express boards for comparison.The 5900 PCX, at AGP XT clocks, is a useful nemesis. The 5900 XT displaced the 5700 Ultra in the affections of gamers shopping in the mid-range for an NVIDIA card at the start of this year. With 6600GT replacing the 5700 Ultra in spirit, a 5900 XT is a nice comparison, especially since 5700 Ultra doesn't exist on PCI Express at the time of writing.
Sticking to PCI Express also lets me avoid the platform differences that an NV43 to AGP NV40/NV45/NV3x comparison would mean. So it's four NVIDIA boards on PCI Express, 6600 GT the focus.
Hardware
- NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT Reference Board, NV43, 128MB, PEG16X, 500/1000
- NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT Reference Board, NV45, 256MB, PEG16X, 350/1000
- NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra Reference Board, NV45, 256MB, PEG16X, 400/1100
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 PCX Reference Board, NV35, 128MB, PEG16X, 390/700
- Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, 512KB L2, 2MB L3, 3400MHz
- Albatron 915P LGA775 Mainboard, LGA775, DDR400
- 512MB Corsair XMS3200LLPT, 2-2-2-6, DDR400
- Western Digital WD360G Raptor, SATA
Software
- Windows XP Professional w/SP2
- DirectX 9.0c Runtime
- NVIDIA Detonator Release 60 and 65, 61.76, 65.76
- 3DMark 2001SE Build 340
- 3DMark03 v3.4.0
- Call of Duty v1.1.1412
- Unreal Tournament 2003 v2225
- Serious Sam: Second Encounter
- ShaderMark 2.0
- D3D RightMark 1.0.4.9 PB3
- Realtime High Dynamic Range Image-Based Lighting v1.2
- FRAPS 2.1
- TexBench 1.3
- SeriousMagic Benchmark
Notes
A New Detonator Driver
6600GT brings with it a new Detonator driver release. The Release 65 version of the driver, on the face of it in the time I've had to examine image quality, doesn't do anything to image quality compared to the last WHQL release (61.76), but it does support the new PCI Express native boards (NV43 based) and it splits up the anisotropic filtering optimisation choices into two sections. Here's a few screenshots.
The main control panel property sheet
6600 GT's 3D clocks
The driver optimisations
The NV43 and NV45 boards used the 65.76 driver using those driver optimisations. The 5900 PCX used the 61.76 WHQL driver with aniso optimisations off, trilinear optimisations on. At the time of writing, NVIDIA wouldn't comment on whether the 65.76 set was being submitted for WHQL certification, but I'd imagine it's not. Bear that in mind when examining the results.
Driver Examination and Image Quality
Image quality appears to be very solid in 65.76, at a cursory glance using a few tools and some game-generated screenshots, along with real-world gameplay in some recent titles (it is 'the Doom3 GPU' after all). AA sample pattern is unchanged since the hardware defines it (and it's static even in the super-sampling modes, compared to 61.76). However, an in-depth exam wasn't possible given time constraints.A full driver exam will appear if time permits, where I'll likely focus on the next 6600-supporting WHQL set.
