Good 3D Performance at a Middling Price: GeForce 6600 Shootout

Test Setup

The clock rates of some of the GeForce 6600 graphics cards tested differ radically from the default reference values set by NVIDIA. To highlight the differences we subjected the cards to extensive performance tests in three modern DirectX 9 games, as well as 3DMark 2005. The test platform for AGP models was based on an Intel D875PBZ motherboard with an Intel i875 chipset. For PCI Express models an Intel D925XCV motherboard with an i975 chipset was used. In both cases we used an Intel Pentium 4 CPU with 3.2 GHz and 1 GB RAM. AGP and PCIe can be legitimately compared with each other, despite the very different bus systems.

The screen resolutions chosen were oriented to the customary native resolutions among TFT displays : 1024x768 and 1280x1024. Apart from the standard representation qualities, the cards also had to show off their paces with 4-fold anti-aliasing (FSAA) and 8-fold anisotropic filtering (AF) activated.

For the sake of better comparisons we also tested various current alternatives to the GeForce 6600, as well as cards of older generations. AGP models are marked with an "*" in the benchmark tables.