THG Graphics Card Buyer's Guide

GeForce 6600

The GeForce 6600 (aka NV43) is the first mainstream line of cards built on the NV4x architecture. To reduce the production cost of the chip. NVIDIA reduced the number of pixel pipelines to eight, pared down the vertex shader units from 6 to 3, and slimmed down the memory interface to 128 bits. Two models have been announced so far: the GeForce 6600 GT and the 6600. NV43 is also NVIDIA's first native PCI Express part. According to NVIDIA, an AGP version of the 6600 using the HSI Bridge chip is already being prepared.

Versions:

• GeForce 6600 - 8PP - 128/256 MB - 128 bit - 300/550 MHz
• GeForce 6600 GT - 8PP - 128/256 MB - 128 bit - 500/1000 MHz

Articles:

• NVIDIA Takes a New Stab at the Mainstream with GeForce 6600
• NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT Comes To THG's Lab

GeForce 6800

The GeForce 6800 is the first product family of NVIDIA's NV4x line of chips. The fact that NVIDIA has dropped the "FX" from the name emphasizes how much the company is trying to distance itself from previous generations with this chip. The entire architecture has been thoroughly overhauled, and the weaknesses of the NV3x addressed. As a result, the NV4x cards no longer suffer a performance penalty when running DirectX 9 shaders at full floating-point precision. Also, with support for DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 3.0, NVIDIA is one step ahead of the competition. Compared to the previous flagship models of the FX 59xx line, this card offers more than twice the performance. Unfortunately, the blazingly fast Ultra versions have very strict power supply requirements (more on this shortly).

The cards of the GeForce 6800 line are available in three versions. The Ultra version features 16 pixel pipelines, runs at clock speeds of 400/1100 MHz (core/memory) and requires two auxiliary power connectors. The GT version differs from the Ultra only in that it runs at a slower speed: 350/1000 MHz, and makes do with only one extra power connector. Finally, there is also the "vanilla" GeForce 6800 (without any suffix) which features only 12 pixel pipelines and 128 MB of memory.

The GeForce 6800 GT and Ultra models are available in both AGP and PCI Express flavors, while the vanilla 6800 currently ships solely as an AGP part.

Versions:

• GeForce 6800 - 12PP - 128/256 MB - 256 bit - 325/700 MHz
• GeForce 6800 GT - 16PP - 256 MB - 256 bit - 350/1000 MHz*
• GeForce 6800 Ultra - 16PP - 256 MB - 256 bit - 400/1100 MHz*

*The PCI Express models support NVIDIA's SLI technology.

Articles:

• Performance Leap: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra

Beyond NVIDIA And ATI - Alternatives

There are very few real alternatives to cards based on chips from ATI or NVIDIA. While boards using XGI or S3 chips are available, these don't have any real presence in the market. Only SiS has been comparatively successful in the market, thanks to the low-cost Xabre 400 and 600 cards. These cards have been plagued by driver problems and low texture quality, though, which should be considered before a purchase.