It is time to rap up this
review and give you my final words and rating on the Asus v6600.
The 5.5 ns SGRAM based v6600 is a next generation card with awesome power, speed and image quality. If you buy this product now, you have to bare in mind that most current games will not make full advantage of the hardware capabilities that the v6600 has. It is simply so new that great options like hardware T&L are not yet supported into the game-code of current games and applications. In the upcoming months however we will see more and more support for it.
One game demo that does actually support T&L is Quake 3 Arena. I've
been fooling around with it and damn .. I had to pick up my tongue
from the ground. Astonishing quality versus framerates above 50
a sec. Seriously, you have never seen anything like this before and no
other card comes close to the geForce.
Will the geForce be competitive enough
towards new cards like Savage 2000 (recently released and slower then
geForce) and Voodoo 4 & 5 ? Well, time will tell but one thing is
sure, up and coming games vs. cards will deliver spectacular better
performance and quality with the next generation cards. We are going
into a new era of videocards. What about a DDR version of the card ?
Well, when it will be available I'd say go for it! If you are going to
pay 300$ for this card you might as well spend a bit more money to
ensure that you can use the card for a longer period of time. With the
current rate of new videocards (every 6 months a new generation)
you'll want to invest in something that can be used a bit longer.
What I found exceptionally good about
the card was it's speed and high quality of rendering 3D scenes. Also
it comes with a nice bundle and really good a nd
detailed manual. Everything is described clearly and visualized
with clear pictures.
Furthermore it is possible to overclock
the card. Hey, ... you didn't mention that, you are thinking. True, we
will be testing future videocard on it's default speed due to
objectivity. As a comparisation we might add overclocking results in
the future. To wrap up this subject, the geForce is higly
overclockable. Default is 120 Mhz for it's core and 166 MHz for it's
memory. We successfully OC'ed the card towards a 150 MHz core and 187
Mhz memory tact frequency.
What we dislike about the card is that is rather expensive. It sells
for an average 300$ and the current support for T&L in games
is lacking.
The v6600 will advance in gameplay with the time that passes.
Upgrade the thang ?
Before you all start sending me an e-mail on whether or not you should
upgrade to the v6600 I'll tell you this. If you have a good 3D card
like TNT-2, Matrox G400(MAX) or Voodoo3 then you should wait
a bit longer. You should at least wait until the price drops and games
have better support for T&L. At that time you might want to
consider this card. If you are the owner of cards like Matrox
Millennium G200, Voodoo 1, Voodoo Rush, Voodoo 2, Banshee, TNT, Riva 128 and other
comparable card then you probably should run to the store and get one
of those babies. (Make sure that you have an AGP slot first).
Good news for Athlon owners,
previously geForce and Athlon would not work. nVIDIA has now solved
the problem. You can download newer drivers that solve these issues
from www.nvidia.com
We rate the card with a score of 89%
If the price would have been lower/better then the result would
definably have been higher since this is a great card to own.
|
Guru3D
Videocard Rating
|
| Performance |
90% |
 |
| Price |
75% |
| Ease
of Use |
90% |
| General
Stability |
90% |
| Image
Quality |
100% |
| Documentation |
90% |
| Compatibility |
90% |
| Overall
Rating |
89% |
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