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AOpen 6600-DV128LP


Date
: 08/13/05 – 03:33:42 PM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: AOpen

Price
: $139

It has been ages since our last AOpen review. Back in the day, we whipped up an article on the AOpen A600 case, and since then we haven't had much to report. But today, we get our chance to check out the
AOpen 6600-DV128LP
.

With SLI capable video cards, performance levels as high as the 7800GTX, one must wonder why
Overclockers Online
would have any interested in something like the 6600. Silence is what makes the difference with this card. No longer will we have to listen to
any
fans with AOpen's silent solution.

Page 2 : Package

The 6600-DV128LP arrived in a very simple box. Using their famous Aeolus, Absolute Extreme Optimize Luxury Ultimate Satisfied, logo laid on top of a pool of water; we see only a few details and only one picture of the card. A single textbox captures the key specifications for curious shoppers.

The back of the box is filled purely with technical details. It lists a large number of specifications and Aopen has printed a number of pictures to visually show you how to use the components.

The sides of the box show additional features that would be of some interest to the end user.

Before we get to the actual card, we'll cover the specifications of the 6600-DV128LP.

Page 3 : Specifications

Taken directly from AOpen's website, we have this set of information:

With the exception of the Low Profile feature, there's really nothing out of the ordinary with this card.

Some of the key features provided by AOpen include:

While it all looks good on paper, keep reading as we'll soon generate some numbers to really see how a passively cooled card performs.

Page 4 : Package Contents

Opening up the box, the video card is fitted into a cutout such that it fits somewhere in the middle of the box. A very soft sponge pad protects the top of the card from anything lying on top of the box.

Lifting out the video card, we pull out the instruction manual, TV Out cables, quick install guide, DVI to VGA converter and two different faceplates.

AOpen has kept the package very simple; the advantage of this is it will keep the cost down – always a plus in the eyes of the shopper.

Pulling the 6600-DV128LP out of the anti-static case, we get our first look at the video card.

You can see right away that the PCB is much smaller than most other video cards. A separate ribbon from the board connects the card to the VGA Output. With the additional faceplates, we could separate the two outputs so they can be installed on separate expansion ports. I sense the advantage of this is it will allow you to fully utilize this card inside mini-ITX cases!

The rear end of this card looks pretty much the same. The large heatsink and aluminum heatpipes encase the GPU and memory modules.

Here's a close up shot of the single backplate:

While it would've been nice to include two DVI connectors, LCD manufacturers are still creating a number of quality displays using VGA technology. For now, you're still safe to buy a video card with one VGA and one DVI output and still have dual LCD setups.

There are four screws that clamp the heatpipes between two heatsink faces. There are then two additional screws that sandwich the heatsinks onto the GPU and memory modules. In total, we have ten screws. I don't recommend you remove
any
of the screws as they were incredible easy to strip.

With the first four screws removed, we can see the two heatpipes with a tiny bit of white thermal paste under them.

Completely removing the heatsinks, we're left with four cushions to transfer the heat from the RAM to the cooler and some thermal paste residue from the GPU.

The bottom half of the heatsink has more cushions to prevent any damage to the components.

From the imprints, we can see that a fair bit of pressure is applied to the GPU by the heatsink. This pressure ensures that there is good contact between the GPU and the cooler.

With the card completely bare, we can see all the little transistors, capacitors and diodes used.

There's not much to say about these little components. However, we do have a few words about the GPU and Memory Modules on the next page.

Page 5 : Powering the 6600-DV128LP

The brains behind this video card is most certainly the 6600-DV128LP.

Heres what nVidia has to say about the 6600:

If you want features, you don't need to look further than this page.

The second most important component of this card has to be the memory modules. AOpen has opted for some Infineon GDDR3 modules.

A quick search on google and we find these specifications.

With a total of 4 of these chips, we get 32*4 which is our 128 MB of memory. A 256MB model would have the full 8 chips; four on the front and four on the back. While our card is rated for 400 MHz, each of the Infineon modules are capable of running at 500Mhz. I can tell you that despite only having passive cooling, I'm crossing my fingers in hopes of getting a nice performance boost out of the memory.

With a complete 360 of this card complete, we're ready to slide her into our test rig and get some performance figures.

Page 6 : Installation & Testing

A video card installation is fairly simple. Apart from having your computer on hand, most installations require no more than one tool – a Philips screw driver. With the addition of tool-less cases, you may not even need a screw driver. Regardless, the most important thing is having the right slot. Without a PCI-E graphics slot available, you'll never be able to fully utilize this card. If you have the proper slot, remove your old card, slide in the new one and boot! Make sure you're running the latest drivers and have all the necessary updates for maximum performance.

Our suite of benchmarks will be composed of a select number of titles to give us an overall gauge of this card. We'll be starting our tests off with three synthetic pieces of software: FutureMark 3DMark 2003, 3DMark 2005 and SpecViewPerf 8.1. Our selection of games include Half-Life 2, UT 2004 and Doom III. Note that the results for a single application are not the end-all be-all of performance judgment. First though, our test setup:

Now that we know what we'll be using, we need to do some overclocking!

Page 7 : Overclocking

Overclocking is a very fine art. While I enjoy using the ATiTool for its simplicity and automated features, I have not yet found anything called nVidiaTool. Instead, we're going to revert back to the classic CoolBits hack. Just Google it if you don't remember or prefer to use a registration file.

While Coolbits offers an auto-detect optimum frequency, it does a very quick overclock. I started with this to find out where I should begin tweaking. The stock frequency of the AOpen 6600-DV128LP is 300/700. Coolbit's autodetect took me to 388/874. After a couple hours of tweaking, I settled for
400/905
. This is a 100 MHz gain on the GPU and a 205 MHz gain on the memory. While not very impressive in standard 6600 overclocking (especially with memory that should pump out 1000 MHz without any issues), you must keep in mind that this a completely passively cooled card
with no
air flow anywhere other than over the CPU! With some good airflow, you could probably push the memory a lot further. I hit 424/930 before all the heat made the card unstable resulting in artifacts all over 3DMark.

I considered an overclock stable when it ran all of our benchmarks three times without any artifacts appearing.

Page 8 : Synethetic

We'll kick things off with the classic FutureMark 3DMark tests. 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. 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.

We can see that the 6600-DV128LP performs slightly worse than the X700 in 3DMark 2005. However, when we go back to 3DMark 2003 we see that the 6600 performs just as well.

If this provides us with any indication of what will happen in the benchmarks to come, we should see an interesting fight between these two.

Taking a look at Spec View 8.1 performance numbers…

The results from Spec View are OpenGL oriented results. It uses real world applications and puts them to the test. A lot of information is available at SPECviewperf. The AOpen 6600-DV128LP is placed closer to the bottom of the pack, however the results are all within a very small margin.

Flip to the next page where we start our look at some games.

Page 9 : Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 is one of the newer titles out and a favourite to many. While its engine relies heavily on the CPU, we see that the AOpen 6600-DV128LP struggles to stay up with the X700. Only the overclocked 6600 stays on par with the stock X700.

As we scale up to the higher resolutions, the stock 6600 takes a punishing hit on performance. Still, the overclocked version stays on par with the stock X700.

The same can be said about the stock card when anisotropic filtering is turned on.

However, the overclocked setting gives the X700 a run for its money, overpowering it at 1280*1024 while staying neck to neck at the lower resolutions.

With anti-aliasing kicked in, the 6600-DV128LP is left in the dust. The overclocked 6600-DV128LP stays on par with the stock X700 and is just below the overclocked X700.

Putting both AA and AF together, the stock 6600-DV128LP is a touch below the X700 at the higher resolution, but way behind at the 800*600 settings. The overclocked settings go head to head with the X700 overclocked all the way to the end.

Page 10 : Unreal Tournament 2004

This DirectX 8.1 title makes the 6600-DV128LP look pretty good. It holds a commanding lead over the X700's.

With anisotropic filtering enabled, the stock 6600-DV128LP takes a back seat and levels with the X700's. It's up to the overclocked settings to power ahead, and power ahead it does, taking a ten frame lead over the X700 overclocked.

With anti-aliasing, the 6600-DV128LP hangs onto a small lead and the 6600 O/C pulls ahead by ten or more frames.

The combination of AA and AF levels the playing field. The 6600 takes a back seat and let's the 6600 O/C do all the talking. While the lead isn't large, at 1280*1024, the OC 6600 beats the stock 6600 by 20 frames!

Page 11 : Doom III

To cap off our benchmarks, we're going to take a look at iD's Doom III. While it's not the latest title, it'll offer some insight as to OpenGL performance.

Things look pretty good for the 6600-DV128LP. The stock settings give us a small ten to twenty frame lead on even the overclocked X700. The gap closes as we move up to the higher resolutions, but it's still there.

When we enable anisotropic filtering, we get the same story.

Anti-aliasing paints a very different picture. Here the 6600 stock and overclocked bow down to the X700.

While there's only a small difference at the lower resolution, it grows to a much bigger one at 1280*1024.

Once again, we put everything together in an AA and AF run. The overclocked 6600-DV128LP stays in the same ballpark as the X700's at the lowest resolution, but as soon as we move up to 1028*768 and above, there's not much hope for the 6600.

Page 12 : Conclusion

What can we say about the 6600-DV128LP after all this testing? The most obvious thing is that this card isn't meant to be used in a gaming environment. You don't exactly buy a passively cooled product and hope for extreme cooling. Instead, this is the type of product one would want inside an HTPC.

While going with a 6600 core, AOpen allows you to play some games on your HDTV. The performance isn't exactly what I would call shabby. Priced at 139 dollars, it's exactly where you would expect to see a product of this nature. Going up a couple of bucks you'll find things like the X700 Pro or the 6600 GT, but nothing that offers the same silence as the 6600-DV128LP.

Advantages

Completely silent
Decent overclock for passive cooling
Will fit inside the smallest cases!

Disadvantages

Potential for more performance if heatsink was larger to dissipate more heat

Overclockers Online would like to thank AOpen for lending us this sample for review.

If you would like to join Overclockers Online as a reviewer, please visit this thread and get in touch with Simon.