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The Technical BlahblahThe GT card tested today will be offered in 128 and 256 MB configurations, you'll likely go for the 256 MB version, we however received the 128 MB model. Let's have a look at NVIDIA's GeForce Series 6 product line:
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.
Gigabyte GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB (GV-NX66T128D-3)
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 GeForce 6600 product line 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
We already ruined the fun a bit in the prologue I guess; but in the box we see a truly fantastic bundle. It comes with a driver CD with ForceWare (66.31 WHQL) drivers and DirectX 9.0c, then there is PowerDVD for your media playback and last but not at all the very least, Doom 3. Brilliant that Gigabyte was able to include this title !
Next to the manual we can find a Composite output cable, your DVI to CRT/VGA adapter and something that I really do like about the package, an output block for S-Video and component HDTV.
The goods we can find inside the box.