Software installation
Nothing much to say here. Installation can be done by a 9 year old
child. (Don't try that at home kids, it's just a figure of speaking!)
The card slides into the AGP slot with ease and drivers are installed
within 2 mouse clicks, perform a reset and boom ... You are good to
go.
The 660 is delivered standard in
'Turbo' mode. If you don't have a system that can coop with all that
speed (PII-266 and below). Then you can set a jumper on the board that
disables the turbo mode and downclocks the card at a 150 Mhz level.
This option might also come in handy with some Asus motherboards that
have problems with cards that consume high levels of energy. However,
we are not here to downgrade are we ? Hell no .. after installation
and some standard tests that I ran I decided that this card is an
overclockers dream and therefore decided to find out the maximum
capability in terms of core and memory speed. I was able to move the
Memory speed up-to 194 Mhz. Then images started to get some static
snow in them. Therefore 190 MHz is a good and steady tact frequency for
the memory. The core was not able to go that high, at 185 the system
started to hang in heavy 3D applications. At 183 MHz it was steady but
every now and then a little polygon error could be found and at 180
Mhz the card was performing like a beauty.
There you have it then, this card
can perform normal and well at a:
- 180 MHz Core frequency
- 190 MHz Memory
frequency
Benchmarks
The following measurements will be based upon the earlier mentioned system. The software that we will be using to test and compare this card is 3D
Mark 99, 3D Mark 99 MAX, X-Bootmark, Final Reality 1.01 and 3dfx's Wizmark. All cards are
measured with the same display setting. (in most cases 800x600x16Bit).
The Core and memory frequency are based up-on 180/190 Mhz.
First up, the benchmark results of 3Dmark Pro. The results
will be shown in all preferred modes. At the following benchmark you can see the results
compared to the Magic TNT2, Voodoo3 3000 and Voodoo2 SLI.
As you can see, GA-660
Plus on top of everything here, voodoo 3, Xentor32, everything. Once again this is the result of a
high core and memory clock frequency. The 660 Plus can
do all this since it has serious good cooling. The TNT2 chip is cooled with a ball-beared fan.
At the backside of the card a cooling bracket/heat sink has been installed
to assure optimal cooling on both sides of the chip. Gigabyte calls this
method their Dual Cooling System, which ensures optimal cooling.
[ Dual Cooling System - Fan on the
frontside, heatsink on backside ]
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