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Albatron 6600 – 512


Date
: 02/25/06 – 06:29:43 AM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturing
: Albatron

Price
: N/A

If you don't know who
Albatron
is let us enlighten you. The Albatron we know of today, and have any interest in, began in 2002 when the company formed a branch with the purpose of designing and manufacturing LCD monitor, motherboard, communication, and graphics acceleration products. They produce motherboards for both AMD and Intel platforms, and are an nVidia certified partner with no ATi based products.

Today we get the opportunity to evaluate one of Albatron's latest video cards. While it sports 512MB of memory, it doesn't belong to the GeForce 7 family. What we have today is a budget product hoping to fit in with the midrange class. Without further ado, let's take a look
Albatron 6600-512 Trinity
.

Page 2 : Package

Our 6600-512 showed up in its retail form as if you picked it up from the store.

As you can see from the cover of the package, the eye candy takes up a majority of the area. Off to the side we see the Albatron logo and a few features printed around the edge to help sell the unit. To the naive, large is often better and seeing 512MB on what will be a rather low cost card definitely creates a good impression on some. While many of the video cards out there rely on DDR3 memory, Albatron has opted on using DDR2 which is not very common on the GeForce 6600 lineup.

To the bottom edge, we get a very clear look at the model we have on hand. The Trinity brand has been around for some time now. A small little block tells us a few of the specifications this card has. We'll be taking a more in-depth look at this on the next page.

Turning the box over we get a very detailed breakdown in a number of languages.

I've zoomed into the English portion on the photo below:

The sides of the box are not exactly pretty, but if you take a careful look, you'll see some useful information.

Not much on this side…

or this one…

but a few features for those who like visual representations…

and finally, a list of features.

Now that we've seen everything on this box, we'll cover the specifications and features before we crack it open.

Page 3 : Specifications

The Albatron 6600-512 is obviously operating on the nVidia GeForce 6600 core. For those interested in learning more about the GeForce 6 family, let me recommend to you the one and only official GeForce 6 webpage. A list of technical specifications can be found on this page, but I draw to your attention these key points:

CineFX 3.0 Shading Architecture
64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending
Intellisample 3.0 Technology
UltraShadow II Technology
PureVideo Technology
Advanced Display Functionality
Advanced Engineering
NVIDIA® Digital Vibrance Control (DVC) 3.0
API Support
Shader Model 3.0

If we jump over to Albatron's website we can get a glimpse at the specifications for this card:

I'll tell you now that these
are not
the final specifications as the sample I have does not run at 350/400, it's more 325/500. A pretty noticeable difference, but what matters most is the final performance and not what is on paper.

Here is the stock speed setting taken from Everest:

This is what Albatron has to say about the 6600-512:

The stakes have been set, but let's first get a closer look at the card.

Page 4 : Package Contents

Cracking open the box we are greeted with a few documents and a CD. The budget card means we won't have all the accessories like an S-Video cable or any software/games.

Since the package came directly from Taiwan, with no retailers currently selling this model in North America, I'm not surprised the first document I see is not in English.

Tucked beneath cardboard is a converter unit that outputs to a TV via S-Video, RCA or HD.

Finally, here is our first shot of the video card in it's anti-static bag:

The card is pretty secure inside its little pocket and you don't have to worry about the card jostling around and possibly chipping the core. My package came inside a standard FedEx box without any packing peanuts.

Yanking the card out of the anti-static bag we see the red heatsink over the graphics processor and the exposed memory ICs.

The backside of the card is pretty bare with really nothing of interest.

Looking at the video outputs, we see a single digital and analog connector. For a card of this type, I'm not surprised to see this configuration.

Before we move on, I'll pop off the heatsink and give us a close look at the GPU and memory. Our red little heatsink is held on by two little push pins. It took about thirty seconds to get them off. The heatsink has a well machined base and a hefty amount of thermal paste applied.

Here's a quick picture of the card without the heatsink:

A close up of the card shows us it is a GeForce 6600 and the production date is 0537.

The 512MB of memory is provided by M-RAM.

I was hoping to find something made by Samsung as Albatron has used their ICs in the past, and they are far easier to look up than M-RAM. At the time of writing, I have not yet found any information about this company or these particular chips. The only way we can judge them is through the specifications Albatron provided on the last page and through our overclocking.

Page 5 : Installation and Overclocking

Installing a brand new video card is certainly not a difficult task. As you build and tear apart more systems, you get to the point where you can probably do it in your sleep.

The first step in mounting the 6600-512 onto my motherboard was to remove the existing video card. After unscrewing the expansion slot screw, I lifted up the tab on the PCI-E x16 slot and slid out the card. I then slid in the Trinity card and gave it a nice little push so all the contacts were made before screwing it back down.

The single slot cooling means you won't have to give up any expansion slots. You also don't need to worry about supplying any additional power because it's not exactly a power hungry card.

With the hardware in place it was time to boot the system and install Windows. I used the nVidia 81.98 drivers and CoolBits to unleash the full potential of this video card. For overclocking, I started with the "Detect Optimal Frequency" before doing any manual tweaking. I raised and lowered the frequency until the settings were stable. Starting at 325/500, I was only able to get the video card up to 350/550.

This setting was artifact free for longer than eight hours and higher frequencies led to artifacts within 10 minutes of scanning.

Let's now go over our system specifications and testing procedure…

Page 6 : System Specification

For today's review, I will be using my Albatron Socket 939 Venice machine.

Instead of picking up a top of the line GeForce 7 video card that would squash our 6600-512, I picked two reasonably priced and worthy ATi competitors.

The suite of synthetic software used included FutureMark 3DMark 2001se, 3DMark 2003, 3DMark 2005 and SpecViewPerf8.1. For games, I ran the card through Half-Life 2, Doom III and Battlefield II at various resolutions and combinations of 4xAA, 8xAA, 8xAF and 16xAF.

Each application was executed three times and the final result calculated as the average of the runs. During the performance evaluations I did not see anything more than a 1-2% deviation in the results.

Let's begin!

Page 7 : Synthetic Performance

Our FutureMark suite of software should give us a good gauge of how the card will perform in DirectX7, DirectX8 and DirectX9 based applications.

Our other synthetic benchmark is SpecViewPerf8.1.

Judging by the 3DMark performance, the 6600-512 is a touch below the HIS X700. However, SPECViewPerf8.1 paints a different picture as the ATi cards pull ahead in nearly all of the OpenGL tests. We do get to see the Albatron 6600-512 squash the competition during the Maya runs.

Let's move onto the games!

Page 8 : Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 is very popular for its single player and multiplayer variations. Behind the game is the Source engine that Valve continues to improve upon and license to other developers. The engine in its shipped state is very dependant on the overall system performance (particularly on the CPU) and we can see this as we look at the frame rate results.

With the eye candy turned off, the overclocked 6600-512 wouldn't be bad on an LCD running at 1280*1024. Top it off with an overclocked system and you will see pretty good frame rates for a budget card like this.

Page 9 : Doom III

DOOM is a classic game and the latest incarnation, DOOM III, uses an OpenGL engine that is quite dependent on the processing power of your video card.

When it comes down to an application that isn't too CPU intensive, our 6600-512 gets a good chance to shine. The frame rates are well past the HIS X700 and about 2/3rd of the way up to the X800GTO16!

Page 10 : BattleField 2

The last game we will be looking at is BattleField 2. This is a very new game and one I enjoy playing.

Once again the performance the 6600-512 offers sits higher than the X700 and below the X800GTO16. Depending on the game and resolution, the 6600-512 will even allow you to turn on Antistrophic Filtering for some improved image quality.

Page 11 : Conclusion

When it came to playing some movies off of my DVD drive, the 6600-512 didn't stutter one bit and the picture quality was as good as it'll get. This card will certainly appeal to those who want to balance overall performance with their budget. With it's quiet operation, it'll easily fit into any HTPC for all your silent needs.

The 6600-512 by Albatron was meant to outperform the cards like the GeForce 6800 and even rival the 6600GT. While it may come up a bit short if those cards are overclocked, Albatron has provided an alternative solution that will certainly cost less while maintaining an average level of performance.

While there are most be applications that can take better advantage of the 512MB memory in a non-gaming environment, I have yet to find any application that will. The 512MB memory would have created better eye candy, but the 6600 core isn't sufficient for the job. It would have been nice to see the 6600GT sport 512MB of memory at a small price increase, but unfortunately that isn't where the road went. Albatron has once again showed it's initiative and innovation, regardless of the outcome, by taking an old card and seeing where it'll go with more memory.I'm expecting more great ideas from this company.

Advantages

Silent Operation
Bundled with HDTV
512MB memory at a low cost for those who know they'll need it

Disadvantages

Not exactly stellar gaming performance for 512MB of memory

Overclockers Online would like to thank Albatron for making this review possible.