Bundle and presentation
It's big, it's a weird shape, and it's angry. The box has a sticker that states 'ludicrously fast memory'. I suppose XFX has the right to call it that. I'd be emblazon 1200MHz RAM speed on every available section of the box, just to ensure that potential buyers didn't miss out on this key performance-enhancing feature.
XFX differentiates its graphics card bundles into regular and gamers' editions. The 6600 GT's is what XFX terms regular. Full titles of X²: The Threat, Commandos 3, and Moto GP2 are included. They're older titles that XFX has been using for a while now. DOOM 3 is often bundled with GeForce 6800-based cards. I'd swap these three titles for it without a second thought. XFX's documentation and reference material is pretty basic, to say the least. A multi-language (6 pages devoted to English) highlights driver installation. A second manual goes into further depth, solely in English, and covers the entire NV40 range.
Our sample's driver CD contained Detonator 66.31s, a whole bunch of publicly available demos, PowerDVD XP 4.0 DVD software, a modified Coolbits overclocking utility, and, surprisingly, only DirectX8.0. You'd think a card that exceeds DX9.0c spec would have an up-to-date API shipped with it.
A couple of DVI dongles are needed to ensure that users can take immediate advantage of NVIDIA' nView multi-display utility. Rounding off the package is a 6-foot S-Video cable that's only good for outputting video. A reasonable bundle and funky presentation from XFX.
What's hard to argue with is GDDR3 RAM run at a lofty 1200MHz. That pushes up potential memory bandwidth to around 19.2GB/s.
