Conclusion

With GeForce 6600 GT, NVIDIA has established new levels of performance for the mainstream graphics segment, shattering all the previous performance records for a $200 graphics card. But beating up RADEON 9800 PROs and GeForce FX 5900 XTs isn’t all the GeForce 6600 GT can do, in our testing the GeForce 6600 GT outperformed last year’s high-end $500 RADEON 9800 XT graphics card in many of our benchmarks.

In fact, thanks to its 500MHz core clock and 8 pixel pipelines, the GeForce 6600 GT boasts a slight fill rate advantage over GeForce 6800. This allows it to perform roughly evenly with the GeForce 6800 under less intensive situations, even in more recent titles such as DOOM 3.

But before you whip out your credit card, don’t forget ATI. Rumor has it that they have a mainstream GeForce 6600 GT competitor of their own up their sleeve. Some online reports suggest this upcoming part shares many of the same traits as GeForce 6600 GT, such as a similar 8x1 pipeline configuration and comparable clock frequencies for the graphics core and memory.

If these rumors ring true, ATI’s upcoming mainstream part could be quite a worthy competitor to the GeForce 6600 GT, although it’s doubtful such a card would support SM 3.0 considering that the high-end RADEON X800 doesn’t have it. Clearly ATI needs to respond to GeForce 6600 GT if they wish to remain competitive in the mainstream segment, as the X600 XT doesn’t come close to matching the 6600 GT in performance.

Besides ATI though, another lingering question remains: availability. NVIDIA has stated that the first GeForce 6600 GTs will begin shipping later this month, but these will be PCI Express 6600 GT cards that are destined for the OEM market. We have no doubt that e-tailers like Newegg and Zipzoomfly will be able to get their hands on some of these cards, but the question is can NVIDIA deliver? GeForce 6800 Ultra is still in short supply, with most board partners focusing their efforts on GeForce 6800 and GeForce 6800 GT instead.

It would be a definite disappointment to a lot of gamers if history were to repeat itself again for GeForce 6600 GT and cards were hard to find. Also keep in mind that AGP-based GeForce 6600 GTs will trail PCI-E boards by a few weeks, so if you planned on picking up an AGP 6600 GT, we wouldn’t be surprised if you have to wait until the middle of October until the first boards become available.

In any case, NVIDIA’s engineering team deserves our recognition for significantly raising the bar this year. First they unveiled their groundbreaking GeForce 6800 series (with a particular emphasis from us on the extremely popular GeForce 6800 GT), then SLI for their high-end PCI Express graphics cards, and now the GeForce 6600 family. For a $200 upgrade, the GeForce 6600 GT is going to be tough to beat. When you factor in the SLI advantage NVIDIA currently boasts, ATI is going to have their hands full surpassing the GeForce 6600 GT…