Moving Down the Pecking Order
With the imminent launch of NVIDIA's next generation G70 graphics processor, we expect readers to be eagerly awaiting our coverage of this new chip. While we promise to reveal the details when the time is right, the release of a new chip inevitably depresses the prices of existing products as performance is brought to the next level. Meaning that current mid-range offerings like the NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT would probably end up moving down to a lower price and performance category in the near future. This would be good news for those budget conscious buyers. In short, for those looking for a relatively cheap but decent performing graphics processor that probably has another good year or two left in it, bargain hunting starts soon. To help you decide which card is for you, we have a couple of PCI Express based GeForce 6600GT cards in our labs and we shall be giving our thoughts on them in the next few reviews (for AGP based options, please refer to our shootout article). First off, we have the ASUS Extreme N6600GT 128MB for the PCI Express.
The ASUS Extreme N6600GT 128MB.
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As we have covered the performance and graphics core of the GeForce 6600GT in previous articles, please refer to them in our relevant links section for more information. Here briefly are the technical specifications for the ASUS Extreme N6600GT 128MB.
ASUS Extreme N6600GT Technical Specifications
| Graphics
Engine |
- NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
GPU
- Stock 2D GPU clock
= 300MHz
- Stock 3D GPU clock
= 500MHz
- 8 pixel rendering
pipelines
- 3 vertex pipelines
(geometry engines)
- 128-bit DDR3
memory controller
- CineFX
3.0 Shading Engine
- Vertex Shaders
- Support for DX
9.0 Vertex Shader 3.0
- Displacement
Mapping
- Vertex
Frequency Stream Divider (Geometry
Instancing)
- Infinite
length vertex programs (supported in
hardware)
- Pixel Shaders
- Support for DX
9.0 Pixel Shader 3.0
- Full pixel
branching support
- Multiple
Render Targets (MRTs)
- Infinite
length pixel programs (supported in
hardware)
- Texturing Engine
Features
- Up to 16
textures per rendering pass
- Support
for 16-bit and 32-bit floating point
formats
- Support for
sRGB texture format for gamma textures
- DirectX and
S3TC texture compression
- Full
128-bit FP Precision Graphics Pipeline
- Native support
for 32 / 64 / 128 bits per pixel
rendering modes
- UltraShadow II
Technology (accelerates shadow
computations)
- Intellisample 3.0
Technology
- 16x Anisotropic
Filtering
- Adaptive Texture
Filtering
- Rotated Grid
Antialiasing
- Fast antialiasing
and compression performance
- Loss-less Color,
Texture and Z-Data Compression
algorithms (in real time)
- Fast Z-clear
- High-resolution
Compression Technology (HCT) increases
performance at high resolutions.
- Advanced Video and
Display Functionality
- Dedicated on-chip
video processor
- MPEG video
encode and decode
- WMV9 decode
acceleration
- Advanced
adaptive de-interlacing
- High quality
video scaling and filtering
- Integrated
NTSC/PAL TV encoder support resolutions up
to 1024x768 with built-in Macrovision copy protection
- DVD and HDTV-ready
MPEG-2 decoding up to 1920x1080i
resolutions
- Dual 400MHz
RAMDACs that support resolutions of
2048x1536@85Hz
- Dual DVO ports for
interfacing external TMDS
transmitters and external TV/HDTV encoder
- Microsoft Video
Mixing Renderer (VMR)
- nView
Multi-display Technology
- Digital Vibrance
Control (DVC) 3.0
- NVIDIA High-Precision
Dynamic-Range (HPDR) Technology
- Advanced thermal
monitoring and thermal management
|
| Graphics
Memory |
- 128MB Graphic DDR3
SDRAM
- Default memory clock =
1000MHz DDR
- 128-bit memory
interface
|
| RAMDAC
|
- Dual integrated 10-bit
per channel 400 MHz DACs that
support resolutions of 2048x1536@85Hz
- Integrated 165 MHz
TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant and
HDCP ready)
|
| Connectors |
- 1 x analog VGA
connector
- 1 x DVI-I connector
- 1 x S-Video output
|
| Drivers
& Software
|
- Driver support for
Windows 98 / Me / 2000 / XP
- Joint Operations:
Typhoon Rising
- ASUS DVD
- CyberLink
PowerDirector 3DE
- CyberLink MediaShow
2.0SE
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| Other
Information |
- 16-lane PCI Express
expansion slot required
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