Conclusion

If all this sounds promising to you, good. But we haven’t told you the most exciting part yet. PCI Express-based GeForce 6600 GT cards will also support NVIDIA’s scaleable link interface technology, more commonly known as SLI. This means that you can purchase one GeForce 6600 GT card now, and buy a second card a few months down the road for roughly double the performance! NVIDIA’s SLI announcement earlier this summer was received positively by the press and public alike, so we have a feeling that many of you will like this feature. NVIDIA will also be integrating their video processor into the GeForce 6600.

SLI 6600 GTs!

6600 GTs connected to each othe

Unlike ATI’s X600 line, NVIDIA will also be providing AGP versions of the GeForce 6600 and 6600 GT with the same feature set, excluding SLI of course. For these cards, NVIDIA’s HSI interconnect technology is used to convert PCI Express signals to AGP, much like it’s used today to go in the opposite direction for GeForce PCX.

PCI Express and AGP-based GeForce 6600 GT’s should start at around $199 when they begin shipping in mid to late September. GeForce 6600 prices should hover right around $150, if not a little lower.

Unfortunately, we can’t answer the performance question on GeForce 6600/6600 GT today, as a last minute board design change prevented boards from shipping to press in time for launch at Quakecon. Early 6600 GT cards required an external power connection, much like the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra/5700 Ultra, but as you’ve seen in our board shots, external power is no longer necessary. Fortunately, NVIDIA did provide one interesting performance figure however: 42 frames per second in DOOM 3’s demo1 demo at 1024x768x32 with 4xAA and 8xAF in high quality mode, or 1600x1200x32 without AA/AF.

As it stands right now, the GeForce 6600 appears well poised to follow-up the GeForce FX 5700/5700 Ultra, but it remains to be seen how well it will stack up to the competition from ATI. GeForce FX 5900 XT may give it a tough time in many situations as well, especially with DX7 and DX8 games. Hopefully we’ll have the answer to this question soon, but as exciting as the GeForce 6600 is today, we’re eager to see what NVIDIA has planned next. NVIDIA CEO Jen Hsun Huang has gone on record to say that by the end of the year NVIDIA will have a top to bottom solution of shader model 3.0 products. That means that the remaining months in 2004 should be quite an interesting time for gamers of in all budgets!