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AGP/PCI-E Graphics Card Group Test (13)
Written by Peter Barnard (07/Mar/05)
Page 6 of 17

Untitled Document

Sparkle 6600 GT

This 6600 GT from Sparkle has the highest value for money rating of all the AGP cards on test. The card runs at the standard AGP 6600 GT clock speeds of 500/450 on the GPU and memory. This is slightly short of the standard 500/500 clocks used by the PCI-E version. We are unsure why these lower clock speeds are chosen, other than to make PCI-E seem like a superior technology.

Since the Geforce 6600 is a native PCI-E design, this AGP card has a bridge chip, which is so complex and power consuming it needs a heatsink of it's own. This chip is responsible for a small drop in the cards performance, but it is still an attractive mid-range card.

The 6600 GPU is an able overclocker, and surprisingly the Samsung 450 MHz memory reached 500 MHz, bringing another 1000 3D Marks with it. The cooling is reasonably quiet and very effective, never getting more than slightly warm to the touch. A standard 3D Mark score of 7876 puts this card comfortably ahead of the last generations top end cards, but still struggles with extremely high resolutions and Anti-Aliasing.

The card is in direct competition with the MSI 6600 Diamond Edition, and whilst it has faster standard settings than the MSI card, it doesn't quite have the same potential for memory overclocking, so the decision is entirely down to how adventurous you are feeling.

Manufacturer

Sparkle

Model

Geforce 6600 GT

Price Inc VAT

£139.77

Value For Money Rating

56.3

Retailer Website

www.microdirect.co.uk

Interface

AGP 8X

GPU

nVidia Geforce 6600 GT

GPU Rendering Pipelines

8

GPU Clock Speed

500MHz

Memory Size

128MB

Memory Type

128-Bit DDR3

Memory Clock Speed

450MHz

Cooling System

Heatsink and Fan

Power Connectors

1x Large 4-pin Molex

Slots Occupied

1

VGA Outputs

1

DVI Outputs

1

TV-Out

Yes

VIVO

No

Adapters

DVI-VGA, RGB

Bundled Cables

S-Video

Bundled Full Games

None

Misc. Bundled

None

Benchmarks

3D Mark 2003 Standard Test

7,876

Aquamark 3 Standard Test

52,629

Unreal Tournament 2004 Maximum Detail

1024 x 768 0x AA 0x AF (FPS)

118

1280 x 1024 2x AA 2x AF (FPS)

124

1600 x 1200 4x AA 4x AF (FPS)

63

Doom 3, High Detail

1024 x 768 0x AA 0x AF (FPS)

73

1280 x 1024 2x AA 2x AF (FPS)

43

1600 x 1200 4x AA 4x AF (FPS)

17

Half-Life 2 Maximum Detail

1024 x 768 0x AA 0x AF (FPS)

77

1280 x 1024 2x AA 2x AF (FPS)

22

1600 x 1200 4x AA 4x AF (FPS)

10

Far Cry Maximum Detail

1024 x 768 0x AA 0x AF (FPS)

56

1280 x 1024 2x AA 2x AF (FPS)

40

1600 x 1200 4x AA 4x AF (FPS)

18


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