NVIDIA's GeForce 6600GT AGP: The Little Bridge that Could
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 16, 2004 12:15 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Counterstrike: Source Visual Stress Test
This time around, we look at a game where ATI has had a long time in the lime light. Valve has pushed Radeon cards as the way to go for Source engine based games, DirectX 9.0 based game engines have tended to favor ATI hardware at least as much as OpenGL has favored NVIDIA hardware. As such, the x800 Pro outperforms the 6600GT by a good ammount. The 9800 Pro is still lagging a good bit behind, which is a good sign for those who want an intermediate AGP upgrade and don't want to wait. People who have owned top of the line cards can get a performance improvement for midrange prices.
While the x800 Pro and 6800 GT scale about the same, the 6600GT does drop off a bit faster. The card does maintain a comfortable margine above the 9800 Pro though.
The older high end card can handle AA better than the 6600GT, and so scales a little better with resolution under 4xAA and the Source VST. At 1280x1024 the 9800 Pro very nearly catches up to the 6600GT.
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Slaimus - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
What is missing is an AGP versus PCIE comparison, so the impact of the bridging can be seen.bob661 - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Newegg has one for $235.http://tinyurl.com/6cjej
pio!pio! - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
#8: What do you mean unlock the stuff? Can you flash the 6800GT BIOS onto the 6800 regular or something?Da3dalus - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
NVidia rocks again 8DStaples - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Hell yeah.I was hoping this card would hit before Christmas. My brother wants a 9800P for Christmas but after seeing the PCI-E vesion as a comprable price, it would pain me to buy a 9800P for the same price.
Staples - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Bonesdad - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Will the retail price here match the street price we see in the real world? Often the MSRP is appreciably higher than street price. Have to wait to see...if it is $175-$200 street price, then the message is clearFinalFantasy - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Awesome card...I might pick one up for my dad's rig.CU - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Anand you must be the only one in the world that can find 6800GT/U and x800Pro/XT, and now a 6600GT AGP the day it is out, but don't have a 6800nu to test with. I wish I had that problem.P.S. I don't mean this in a bad way or anything. I just thought it was funny.
mldeveloper - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
will we see a pci express 6600gt vs. agp 6600gt to confirm if the bridge chip actually affects performance