eVGA e-GeForce 6600 GT

eVGA is a very popular NVIDIA graphics solution among gamers and enthusiasts due to their wide distribution channels among both brick and mortar stores such as Office Depot and Circuit City, as well as online retailers like Newegg and Zipzoomfly. eVGA is also well known for standing behind their products; eVGA’s forums are filled with anecdotes of users who have received prompt product support via the eVGA forums, e-mail, or phone-in tech support. Another unique feature eVGA provides their customers is their step-up program.

Step-up allows eVGA customers to trade in their existing eVGA graphics card for the latest and greatest model available, as long as the upgrade occurs within 90 days of the initial card purchase. eVGA customers simply pay the difference between the two cards to complete the transaction. This allows prospective eVGA owners to purchase a faster graphics card if the original doesn’t meet their needs, or upgrade if NVIDIA introduces newer technology, but you can only step-up once so you should use it wisely.


For their GeForce 6600 GT AGP card, eVGA strictly follows NVIDIA’s reference design. eVGA uses the same power components and aluminum heatsink, and even borrows the same DOOM 3 sticker adorning the card’s cooler. This helps eVGA get their GeForce 6600 GT card to market quicker, as they don’t have to come up with their own design, or rely on external suppliers for parts like custom copper cooling. In fact, eVGA began selling copper heatsink units for the GeForce 6800 Ultra a few months ago.

Because of this, we were a bit surprised when we booted the eVGA card up only to see that it didn’t provide hardware monitoring functionality in the reference NVIDIA display driver. NVIDIA’s NV43 GPU features a thermal diode onboard, so eVGA must have decided to disable the chip’s hardware monitoring capability via BIOS for some reason. (It’s also possible that eVGA may have addressed this already with a quick BIOS update.)

eVGA relies on the standard NVIDIA clock frequencies of 500MHz for the graphics core and 450MHz for the card’s memory. This allows it to perform in line with other GeForce 6600 GT AGP cards from most manufacturers. Also like many other manufacturers, eVGA outfits their e-GeForce 6600 GT AGP with the traditional DVI/VGA connector combination.

Included in the card’s packaging are trial copies of Ulead Photo Explorer 8 and DVD MovieFactory 3 disc creator, as well as eVGA’s SyScan utility software, which checks to ensure that all of your system drivers are properly installed and up to par. Hardware accessories bundled with the e-GeForce 6600 GT AGP include a component video adapter box (with built-in S-Video and RCA connections) for hooking your card up to an HDTV, as well as a DVI adapter, and an additional S-Video cable. No power adapter cable is included in the packaging however.