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Technical BlahblahThe card tested today as you have been able to observe will become available in 128 and 256 MB configurations, you'll likely go for the 256 MB version. Let's have a look at NVIDIA's GeForce Series 6 product line with the most important retail cards:
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Product Lineup Specifications | ||||||
Product Name |
# pixel processors |
# vertex processors |
Bus width |
Memory Type/Amount |
GPU Speed |
RAM Speed |
GeForce 6800 Ultra |
16 |
6 |
256-bit |
GDDR3/256MB |
400MHz |
1100MHz |
GeForce 6800 GT |
16 |
6 |
256-bit |
GDDR3/256MB |
350MHz |
1000MHz |
GeForce 6800 |
12 |
5 |
256-bit |
GDDR/128MB |
325MHz |
700MHz |
GeForce 6800 LE* |
8 |
4 |
256-bit |
GDDR/128MB |
320MHz |
700MHz |
GeForce 6600 GT | 8 | 3 | 128-bit | GDDR3/128/256MB | 500MHz | 1000MHz |
GeForce 6600 | 8 | 3 | 64/128-bit | GDDR/128MB | 300MHz | 275(550) |
GeForce 6200 |
I started this article by stating "a product for any budget." As you can see from the table above, NVIDIA is rather happy with the Series 6 graphics processor, they announced Series 6 in April and look what is saturating the retail and OEM market already. Quite amazing.
As you have noticed, the GeForce 6600 GT cards come with a 500 MHz clock and memory rate, 128-bit (GDDR3, 128 MB) with a suggested price tag of $/EUR229. The standard GeForce 6600 will also come with that 128-bit bus (GDDR, 128/256 MB), will cost about $150 and has a way lower ~300 MHz core clock. The memory clock is something that can be decided by the manufacturer, however. You'll notice that this particular Prolink model has a 300 MHz core. The 6600 series have been proven to be extraordinary overclockers though, how does 550 MHz on the core sound? Well... you'll read all about it in the overclocking part.
The product
has 8 Pixel pipelines and 3 Vertex processors that are confirmed to be working 100% with Rivatuner. The 6600 series can write only four color pixels per clock and has a fragment crossbar. The NV43 does appear to have eight pixel shader/texture units, so its not an "8 x 1" design or a "4 x 1" design. It's more of a hybrid and works quite well.Bundled Items
In the box, we see a real el cheapo bundle! It comes with... a driver CD. Seriously ForceWare (66.31 WHQL) drivers and DirectX 9.0c, that's it.
Next to the manual we can find a Composite output cable, your DVI to CRT/VGA adapter and something that I do like about the package, an output block for SVideo, Composite and component HDTV.
The goods we can find inside the box.
Here's that connector block I mentioned. Simply hook it up to the card and you have all your outputs ready to be used.