The exact performance of the GeForce 6600 and GeForce 6600GT is difficult to estimate as a result of the lack of an appropriate test card. NVIDIA does indeed cite some results from Doom III, running on a P4 3.4 GHz EE Edition with 2 GB of RAM. In addition to which there are a few more standardized comparisons with the ATI X600 XT.

This is taken from the NVIDIA presentation:

Again, all benchmark data was provided by NVIDIA. We can't confirm the data yet.

To Sum Up

On paper, NVIDIA's new GeForce 6600, code-named NV43, has the potential to be successful. NVIDIA's own performance figures for the 6600 GT promise performance on a par with a GeForce 5950 Ultra or Radeon 9800XT, at a lower price. Together with modern NV40 architecture, including improved FSAA and DirectX 9.0c support with shader model 3.0, the card could become a hot tip in the mid-range price segment. But this all remains pure speculation until the first cards become available for testing. The same applies to the GeForce 6600 standard version, for which NVIDIA has supplied no benchmark results.

As a native PCI Express chip, the NV43 is the first NVIDIA graphics processor that can do without an HSI bridge chip interface. In a reverse move, however, NVIDIA equips the AGP variant of the GeForce 6600 with HSI. Thus, the development of the HSI bridge chip, designed to work in both directions, has paid off, and NVIDIA spares itself a costly tape-out of its own AGP variant of the chip. Of course, what the card manufacturers think of this is another story - ultimately, they have to help pay for this bridge chip. In the end, what makes or breaks the success of a graphics card in the dog-eat-dog mainstream segment is the price

Does the GeForce 6600 have what it takes for a "Doominator"? We'll only be able to say for sure after we've put NVIDIA's new GeForce cards through extensive benchmark testing.