Mid-range PCI-Express Shootout

www.bit-tech.net/review/387

 

I have an XFX branded AGP version of the 6600GT. I'm able to run this with the GPU at 600Mhz and the Memory at 1200Mhz with watercooling. GPU at 585Mhz and the Memory at 1170Mhz with air cooling.

The AGP versions of 6600GT card generally come as standard with the memory clocked slower than the PCI Express versions, but it appears they can be clocked to same level manually without any problems.

 

could be the lager talking, but i've noticed a few boo-boo's

- bottom of the BFG page is cut off mid sentence...

- the pictured S-Video cable in the last pic of the X700 with RGB pigtails is a SVHS to Component adapter, not a second SVHS to composite... the SVHS to composite cable is definitly preferred to a plug. strain relief is a big issue with DIN connectors.

cheers! other than that looks like a great article. too bad i'm not in the market for PCI-E yet... maybe next year?

 

Thanks for that, paste error on the first part (I obviously didn't paste the whole of that last paragraph from Word ), slight misinfo on the second. Both corrected, thanks for picking up on them.

Thanks

It would depend on how much you game, as to whether you should upgrade or not, but I would wait until the next generation now if you aren't planning anything right now.... that is, of course, providing that both ATI and NVIDIA can get the products on the shelves in good time after they are announced.

 

I'm a few generations back on hardware, i.e. nForce2 Ultra 400 board, FX5200 GPU. I had looked at the new DFI and MSI NF4 boards, but i'm a bit short on funds at the moment. I've got a stash set aside for a tablet PC.

On a slightly tangent note, would you recommend waiting for a newer mobo before upgrading to a 6600, or would an AGP version be adequate?

 

Do you mean GeForce 6600 GT or GeForce 6600?

You'd benefit hugely from an extra 512MB of memory, it really helps in today's titles.

It would also depend on how fast your CPU is too - have you overclocked it?

 

The correct way of showing the roof on the building is on the ATI card. If you look at the "The Project" That ATI and Crytek did you'll see a pre-rendered shot of the building in the demo that shows it exactly the way the ATI card produces it.

 

the price difference is only about $25-30, so i'd most likely go with the GT.

the system specs in my .sig are for my htpc, not the desktop. The desktop has a XP 2600+ and 2x512 PC3200. No plans on OCing the CPU until I get a different board--no mounting holes on the KX18D series. I'm considering the AGP upgrade because of this problem i'm having. I'm not really a serious gamer, but I would be more inclined to game if I had a card that could hang with new software.

 

This is fixed in the latest official beta drivers that I have.

 

Well, the 6600GT would be a big step up from an FX 5200, you would notice the difference.

 

I kinda figured as much. I just hate to spend the $$ on a new AGP card that costs about the same as a PCI-E, but the baggage of upgrading mobo/cpu is a bit cost prohibitive.

But now that I think of it, all the systems I build with "headroom" to upgrade are usually hopelessly obsolete by the time i get around to upgrading them. That's prolly got something to do with buying into the stuff that's already a year old

 

See my post above (Number 2).

Before I bought the 6600GT I read several reviews. I did come accross one that compared the performance of an AGP version of the 6600GT with a PCIe version on an otherwise similar set up. I can't find the review now, but I remeber that the difference in performace was between the the AGP and PCIe versions of the cards was negligible.

 

In actual fact, BFG's GeForce 6600 GT OC on AGP is clocked the same as the one we have reviewed here! The box is the same - the only difference is the card included (AGP rather than PCI-Express).

XFX's GeForce 6600 GT AGP is also overclocked to 500/1000. The stock clocks for the reference GeForce 6600 GT AGP are 500/900.

 

I don't know if this is the right place to put it, but I think that it would be useful to know in GFX articles how the cards perform compared to previous generations.

I know it would be (a lot) more work, but it would be realy useful. The thing I want to know when upgrading isn't the absolute FPS of the new GFX card, its the difference between my current card and the new card.

So something like a small table of percentage increases in speed compared to some standard mainstream (older) cards, like ATI 9800 pros, FX5900s etc.

Just a suggestion for something that would be useful in my opinion. Which probably doesn't count for anything around here .....



-wolfman

 

Hi, welcome to bit-tech forums.

Thanks for your suggestion - if you look back through: http://bit-tech.net/review/hardware

You will notice that there are already articles where we have looked at how the previous generation performs against what we have reviewed here. These video cards are retail samples, and thus are compared to other retail samples in the same price category. In reference reviews, we do try and cover how the new technology performs against something that we have evaluated previously.

 

Cheers, I've been following but-tech for quite a while, just never got round to posting anything here before now.

I guess what I am trying to say is perhaps something like the Toms Hardware VGA charts. A table of all previous scores for various standard games and benchmarks, that is just simply updated each time there is a new review. Then its easy to see in one place how good a new card is compared to the previous generations, and also compared to those reference cards you talked about.

It doesnt have to be a nice pretty graph, just a html table of text on its own page would be easy to keep up to date and add new results in.

I know I could just go and look at the TH charts, but it would be nice if I didn't have to because bit-tech had a better version ....

-wolfman

 

I would like to add to wolfman's comments.

It's useful to see how one product compares to other products of the same generation in order to see which offers the best performance for a given price. However, we generally read reviews when we are looking to upgrade an existing component and many reviews leave out a comparison with earlier generations of the same product.

If they do offer a comparison with older products, they often don't go back far enough. Not everyone updates every 6 months and we find that the component we want to see a comparison to have fallen off the review site's radars.

My last card was a Radeon 9700 pro, a card which was very popular at the time it was introduced and I'm sure that there are many people still using one. I was up until 2 weeks ago. However, it or cards of it's generation rarely get a mention in performance comparisons.

I imagine that very few people upgrade every "generation" for a barely noticeable 5 or 10% performance increase or improvement. I don't have more money than sense and I want a fair amount of use out of something before I upgrade. When I do upgrade, I want a 20 or 30% improvement that I can really notice.

With a graphics card, going from 65FPS to 70FPS at a similar resolution and eye candy setting isn't going to vastly improve your gaming experience and doesn't represent a value for money upgrade. Whereas going from 40FPS at low resolution with all the eye candy off to 70FPS at a higher resolution with all the eye candy on makes a difference you can really appreciate.

 

That is where the reference reviews come in...

And, when testing cross platform, that also brings in more complications. It depends whether you would rather see one or two video card reviews a month, or four to six reviews of more than just video cards a month from me...

 

I just got one of my regular emails from Pc-Pro magazine, nice little ad in the middle...

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Thinking about the upgrade to PCI-Express?
The team at bit-tech have examined 3 PCI-Express graphics boards from High-Tek, BFG and Club3D, incorporating chipsets from both ATI and Nvidia. The GeForce 6600GT chipset faces off against the X700 Pro, as they work out which card will give you the most zing for your money. Think high-end graphics means expensive?
Think again, these come in at just £150!
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