Overclocking and thoughts
OverclockingA 110nm manufacturing process bodes well for overclocking. I PowerStripped my way up to a rock-solid 600MHz core and 1145MHz memory.
That's around 4.8GTexels/s and over 18GB/s of juicy bandwidth. How does that reflect when running DOOM 3 at 1280x1024 4x AA/8xAF?.
As Tesco is fond of saying, every little helps. There's still a fundamental barrier between GeForce 6800 GT and 6600 GT, just as one would expect.
Final thoughts
I've been a fan of NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 GT since its recent launch. It has right mix characteristics for a card priced at £150 or so. There's decent pixel-pushing power that's aided and abetted by 16GB/s memory bandwidth, albeit from a 128-bit memory bus. Sheer card grunt is augmented with a full set of DX9.0c/OpenGL 1.5 features, including Shader Model 3.0 and High Dynamic-Range (OpenEXR 64-bit) rendering, along with the possibility of adding another in SLI mode. Our benchmarks have shown it to be at least as fast as ATI's X700 variants, and much, much faster in OpenGL titles such as DOOM 3.
Given the above, Hong Kong-based Inno3D's already starting off with a decent GPU to work with. Its 6600 GT 128MB card certainly looks the part, outfitted with Cooler Master's funky GPU cooler and RAMsinks. Overclocking results on our sample were also encouraging, and thus further sweeten the £150 deal. What I'd like to see, however, is a stronger software package. Inno3D is having to do battle with established graphics card partners such as ASUS, MSI, and Leadtek. These companies have sufficient economies of scale to provide a complete gaming bundle at a similar price point. Inno3D needs to at least match their efforts in both hardware and software terms if its products are to go at the very top of your shopping list.
In summary, Inno3D's GeForce 6600 GT 128MB card is a credible effort that's based on an excellent GPU. Certainly worthy of a look if not an outright recommendation.
