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Galaxy GeForce 6600 256 MB PCI-E


Date
: 11/27/04 – 06:30:49 PM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer:
Galaxy

Price:
NA

This, our third look at PCI Express graphics, features a brand more common to people in the western hemisphere and finally a next generation GPU derivitive belonging to the GeForce 6 family. It was just a couple of months ago when we were looking at the mainstream Albatron PCX5750 Trinity which was hardly the gamer's choice of cards, but do to timing, a sufficient card to hold early adopters over until the fall. Well, fall has arrived and with it the PCI Express mainstream parts from ATi and nVidia.

The GeForce 6600 that we'll be looking at today is quite the attractive lot. Featuring hardware DirectX 9 support and Shader Model 3.0, the 6600 has replaced the PCX5750 in pricing and some in performance. Read on as we examine the
Galaxy GeForce 6600 256MB
.

Page 2 : Package

The Galaxy GeForce 6600 was shipped to us direct from Galaxy and free of any damage. Inside the package was the retail box pictured here:

Inside the retail package are a S-Video cable, S-Video to composite adapter, DVI to D-Sub adapter, a disk containing the drivers and a digital manual, and full versions of PowerDVD 5 and MotoGP 2.

It's typical for mainstream/budget GPUs to have a very basic software bundle, as we see with this card from Galaxy. The fact that they included at least one game is nice, but had they included a more recent game or game discount it might catch more people's attention.

On top of its software bundle, the card itself also has a very basic appearance. The one nice thing about the card is its bright blue PCB color. I actually have known people who buy parts based on color so that they will match case/mobo/etc. Just give me some good performance and I'll be happy.

Similar to most cards today, this board has DVI, D-Sub, and S-Video output connections. There is also no extra power connector needed as the card is fed completely from the PCI Express graphics slot.

The front of the card only has a small, single copper heatsink on top of the GPU for cooling. As we'll discuss later, the lack of any heatsinks on the eight memory chips is a real bummer as it will play a role in the frequencies of the core that are stable.

Compared to the Albatron PCX5750 and Gainward Ultra1800PCX (GeForce PCX 5750 and 5900XT respectively), the Galaxy GeForce 6600 has no bridge chip and is a native solution. This should make these boards cheaper to produce comparitively.

Shifting our attention to the back of the board reveals next to nothing. All the memory chips are on the front of the card and so, no additional cooling is really needed here.

Back to the front of the card and removing the heatsink, we can see that thermal paste was used, and after a bit of cleaning that the GPU is indeed a 6600.

The memory chips used on this card are TSOP packaged Hynix chips with a 32MB capacity and rated for 3.3 ns operation. This tells us that these chips are capable of running at approximately 606 MHz; 56 MHz above stock settings.

Page 3 : Specifications

The following specifications were provided by Galaxy:

The GeForce 6600, codenamed NV43, is an 8-pipelined version of the GeForce 6800s with the exceptions being that it has only a 128-bit memory bus and can only write 4 processed pixels in a single cycle compared to 8. Both of these differences will have their largest impacts on AA and other memory intensive settings resulting in decreased performance.

One thing that places the GeForce 6600 and 6600GT ahead of the pack is the .11u process, which they are manufactured on. What this means to the end user is a cooler running chip with higher frequency potential. But not all is good it seems. Unfortunately for the GeForce 6600, it is not built with SLI capability. This may or may not play such an important role for budget cards right now, but in the future when cards become cheaper, SLI becomes an attractive way to cheaply boost your performance.

Page 4 : Features

The GeForce 6 family of GPUs feature what nVidia calls their CineFX 3.0 engine:

The GeForce 6 series of GPUs also feature an on-chip video processor, which at this time of writing has yet to be enabled by nVidia.

Page 5 : Installation & Overclocking

Installing a video card is very simple and requires little instruction. The only thing one needs to be sure of is that they have the proper slot available, in this case we need a PCI Express slot. Simply slide in the card, fasten it in, hook up your desired output, and boot. Once you're booted up, you just need to install the drivers to get the most out of the hardware. For this installation, I used the latest available drivers from nVidia's web site: Forceware 66.93 WHQL Certified.

When it came time to test the overclocking capabilities of the Galaxy GeForce 6600 I had my hopes up pretty high because of its relatively low core clock and smaller .11u fabrication process. Unfortunately, it's hard to say what this core is capable of with the basic cooling used by this card. During testing of the overclocks, it was eventually found that despite running the memory at its rated frequency, it was causing instability of the core. Lowering the memory frequency significantly enabled me to raise the core frequency without such instabilities. With proper memory cooling this card has the potential to really be pushed, but right out of the box things aren't so rewarding. My final clock speed settled on was 345/570 compared to the stock frequencies of 325/550.

The performance of these overclocked figures are included in our testing.

Page 6 : Testing

To test the performance of the Galaxy GeForce 6600 256MB, we used some of today's new and popular games as well as some synthetic benchmarks. The line-up of games we tested with were Doom 3, Far Cry, Unreal Tournament 2004, and the Half-Life 2 Stress Test. The synthetic tests used were Futuremark's 3DMark 2003 and 3DMark 2005. While some may argue the usefulness of synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark, we feel that they provide an accurate gauge of relative gaming performance among targeted generations. 3DMark 2003 provides a solid indication of performance one can expect compared to other cards in DirectX 7, DirectX 8, and early DirectX 9 games. The recently introduced 3DMark 2005 provides us with an indication of performance one can expect compared to other cards in new and upcoming DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 titles. Just like any benchmark however, results for a single application are not the end-all be-all of performance judgement.

The tests were conducted using the following systems:

And strictly for comparisons sake, we have an AGP system:

Page 7 : Performance (Synthetic)

These synthetic results give us an idea of what to expect in terms of game performance. According to these results, we can expect the 6600 to perform similar to a 9700 Pro. Not bad expectations considering the 6600 also boasts an expanded feature set. Lets check out how these results correlate to gaming…

Page 8 : Performance (Standard Gaming)

In both FarCry and Doom 3 we see the 6600 from Galaxy taking commanding leads. To nVidia's benefit, the latest FarCry patch added Pixel Shader 3.0 support improving shader performance. Also added was the ability to enable hardware geometry instancing resulting in better looking scenery in the distance without a noticable performance loss. Doom 3 is of course a finely tuned animal that nVidia catered their architecture to, and furthermore nVidia has typically been dominant in OpenGL applications.

Looking at both Half-Life 2 and UT2k4 performance shows either equal or near equal performance to the good old 9700 Pro. Both cards are able to deliver smooth playing experiences in both games. It is worth note that even with the 5750 using the DirectX 8.1 path it still doesn't deliver desirable framerates in anything but UT2k4.

Page 9 : Performance (AF)

When enabling AF, we see the 9700 Pro take a noticable dive in Doom 3 while the 6600 holds its ground. FarCry produces similar, though not so drastic results with the 9700 Pro losing about 4 FPS and the 6600 losing only about 1 FPS. UT2K4 paints a similar picture to FarCry, while Half-Life 2 costs more for both the 9700 Pro and 6600 to enable. Again, aside from UT2k4, the 5750 delivers undesirable performance.

Page 10 : Performance (AA)

Turning AA on hurts performance dramatically. Only UT2k4 and possibly Half-Life 2 can be considered playable in these modes with the 9700 Pro and 6600. The 5750 has no chance in hell.

Page 11 : Performance (AA-AF)

Same story as with AA in terms of playability.

Page 12 : Image Quality

Throughout gameplay and testing with this card, there were no visual degradations in image quality that were noticable compared to an ATi Radeon 9700 Pro. Below are two images taken during the Half-Life 2 Stress Test to compare quality. The screenshots were taken at 1024×768 resolution. Clicking on an image will show the full scene.

ATi 9700 Pro

Galaxy GeForce 6600 256MB

The effects of both 4xAA and 8xAF are very apparent and between the two cards they display near identical results.

Page 13 : Conclusion

The Galaxy GeForce 6600 is a great card for those on a tight budget, but still looking for a good PC gaming experience. It handles all of todays games very well without sacrificing image quality or features. My only gripe is with the card's simple cooling solution which will hinder any worthwhile overclocking gains. It seems like RAM-sinks would be of great benefit to realize this potential.

What stands out most about Galaxy's solution though is their choice of 3.3 ns Hynix chips and a 256 MB framebuffer. These two characteristics seperate it from some of the other 6600 choices out there. In the end, as long as SLI is not your peak concern, I feel that this card offers a nice bang for your buck.

Advantages

PCI Express
DirectX 9.0; Shader Model 3.0
Good performance
Low cost

Disadvantages

Uses a basic cooling solution