Budget Videocard

Top vidcard $0-150

NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
Sorting through the confusing mess that has become the low end of the video card market can be a pretty frustrating experience these days. As we feared when the HyperMemory and TurboCache cards were first announced, many of our own readers are confused by all the GeForce 6200 and RADEON X300 variants floating around out there. If all the cards out there baffle many of our own readers, we can only imagine what it’s like for the Average Joe walking into his local computer store!

Therefore we’ll keep it simple for you: avoid these budget cards altogether! While these cards are selling for pretty attractive prices right now, typically anywhere from $40-$70, you can buy yourself substantially more performance if you’re willing to spend another $20-$40.



For $100, you should be able to pick up a GeForce 6600 DDR1 card. This gets you 8 pixel pipelines with a 300MHz graphics core and 275MHz DDR memory. NVIDIA has recently replaced the GeForce 6600 DDR1 with a newer DDR2 model that delivers even higher clocks – 350MHz on the graphics core and 400MHz memory. A little over a month ago we reviewed one of these boards, XFX’s GeForce 6600 DDR2, and found it to be an excellent performer with tremendous overclocking potential and performance. The only problem is that more board partners haven’t stepped up to the plate and produced GeForce 6600 DDR2 boards; XFX is the only board partner to really hit shelves in the US so far. As a result, street prices are very close to the board’s offical MSRP of $119. Newegg for example currently sells the XFX card for $117. In our review we were told to expect a price tag of around $99.

Instead, at $117, the board is priced awfully close to first generation GeForce 6600 GT PCI-E boards, which can be found online selling for about $130. Newegg is actually offering XFX’s own 6600 GT board for $120 after a $10 mail-in rebate!

Because of this, we’ve got to give the edge to the GeForce 6600 GT.

Looking over the two cards, for about the same price, the first-gen GeForce 6600 GT gives you the same NV43 graphics core, but more importantly buys you DDR3 memory. While the second-gen DDR2 memory XFX uses on their 6600 DDR2 board is great, running much better than early DDR2 memory, it seems to max out around 460-485MHz. While this is close enough to the GeForce 6600 GT’s stock levels to deliver similar levels of performance (as you saw on page 15 of our XFX review), it still isn’t quite the same. In addition, the GeForce 6600 GT can be overclocked just as easily as the XFX GeForce 6600 DDR2, with the key being that it’s memory can hit speeds of over 500MHz.

If you want to splurge and spend all of that $150, you should probably look into one of the second or third-gen GeForce 6600 GT cards. These newer 6600 GT boards ship with 256MB of memory, rather than the 128MB that shipped with the first-gen boards. In addition, you can find some pretty unique cards out there. ASUS for instance makes a GeForce 6600 GT 256MB card that relies entirely on heat pipes for cooling. As a result, the board runs completely silent!