Doom 3 Ready

At the introduction of both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 at this year's E3, the console makers, Microsoft and Sony respectively, took pains to elaborate on the technologies that power their latest consoles. More tellingly, they also spent a lot of time focusing on the game developers and their forthcoming game titles. It may be a cliché but games consoles do not pay themselves, games do. Similarly, in the PC world, games are the reason why some people upgrade their hardware; gamers are arguably the drivers of innovation in the graphics industry. And when it comes to innovation in 3D game programming, there is no disputing the impact of id Software, creators of the modern first person shooter genre. Under the leadership of founder John Carmack, they have been pushing the envelope of graphics technology and their latest technological opus magnum – Doom 3, uses one of the most advanced 3D graphics engines now. Not surprisingly, makers of high-end machines catering to hard-core gamers say sales increased between 10 and 20 percent in the days before and after Doom 3's release. Meanwhile, graphics card vendors have also jumped onto the bandwagon by introducing products with Doom 3 as part of the software bundle. One of them is Gigabyte, which has special Doom 3 editions of their GeForce 6 series of graphics cards.

We received the special Doom 3 edition of the Gigabyte GV-NX66T128D but the only difference between this and the normal retail edition is the packaging and the inclusion of the Doom 3 game with the card.

Continuing with our previous review of the ASUS Extreme N6600GT 128MB, we are reviewing today another PCI Express-based NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT. To be exact, a Doom 3 edition of the Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT: the GV-NX66T128D. Unfortunately, the limited Doom 3 edition may not be easily available in retail markets but the only difference is the presence of a retail version of the Doom 3 game. Everything else is the same; most importantly, the graphics card is the same for both the normal and the Doom 3 edition. Given that you are more likely to find the normal version, we will treat our Gigabyte GV-NX66T128D as such in this review, meaning that the software and accessories mentioned are the ones found in the standard version. Here then are its technical specifications: