Introduction

NVIDIA’s high-end GeForce 6800 GT has won a loyal following among enthusiasts due to its compelling combination of price, features, and performance. The 6800 GT’s formula is simple: take a 16-pipe GeForce 6800 Ultra and tone it down just a bit by clocking its core at 350MHz and pairing it with 256MB of GDDR3 memory operating at 500MHz (1.0GHz effective). These changes reduce the power requirements, allowing NVIDIA to use a smaller cooler that only requires a single slot, while 6800 GT cards themselves retail for $100 less than the 6800 Ultra at an MSRP of $400.

The end result is a product that delivers more than enough performance for today’s latest games, with good visual quality and shader model 3.0 compliance for the next generation of DX9 games of tomorrow. But what if you don’t have $400 to shell out for a graphics card? This is where NVIDIA’s GeForce 6600 GT comes in.

GeForce 6600 GT reference card

Reference board with ATI X700 PRO and GeForce 6800 from Leadtek

GeForce 6600 GT and X700 card

The GeForce 6600 GT is based on the same fundamental technology as the GeForce 6800 GT, this includes NVIDIA’s more powerful CineFX 3.0 shading engine, which features completely redesigned pixel and vertex shaders, support for shader model 3.0, UltraShadow II, and 64-bit texture filtering and blending. The only significant change is that the 6600 GT’s core components have been sliced in half.

The 6600 GT sports half the number of pixel pipelines, sixteen in GeForce 6800 GT versus eight in the 6600 GT, half the vertex units (six in 6800 GT compared to three in 6600 GT), and a 128-bit memory interface that is powered by two 64-bit memory controllers, versus four 64-bit memory controllers in GeForce 6800 GT for a 256-bit interface. Fortunately, the 6600 GT’s core components aren’t the only aspects that have been halved; the 6600 GT’s price tag is also sliced in two with an MSRP of $200.

NVIDIA-provided reference shot

Back of the card

Angled shot of older NVIDIA reference board

But a cutting-edge feature set and mainstream pricing aren’t the only positives GeForce 6600 GT has going for it, the card is also an impressive performer. In our performance preview in September, we found it was capable of outperforming last year’s high-end $500 graphics cards in many games under a variety of situations. As long as you didn’t tax the card’s 128-bit memory subsystem too hard with high levels of AA or AF, the 6600 GT was usually able to outperform ATI’s more expensive RADEON 9800 XT.

The only initial downside to the GeForce 6600 GT was its interface, the first GeForce 6600 GTs that were shipped were PCI Express-based, this caveat shut out 95% (or more) of the do-it-yourself enthusiast crowd that’s usually so quick to adopt brand-spanking new cards like the GeForce 6600 GT. But all that’s changed as NVIDIA and its board partners have recently begun shipping AGP-based GeForce 6600 GT cards to retailers like Newegg, who currently sells the XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP for $245 online, just in time for the holidays!

Today we’re taking NVIDIA’s reference GeForce 6600 GT AGP out for a spin, let’s see how it compares to a few other graphics card options out there…