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MSI NX6600 Ares

17 Mar 2006

Just when you thought that most graphics card vendors have all moved to the newer GeForce 7 series, MSI launches a spanking new GeForce 6600 DDR2 card which looks like a million dollars, with its golden trimmings on a black PCB.

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HWZ's Overall Rating: 8.0

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			<h2 class="header-green">MSI NX6600 Ares (GeForce 6600 DDR2 256MB, PCIe)</h2>
		<span class="byline">Reviewed by Vincent Chang on Friday, 17 Mar 2006</span>
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		 		<h2 class="page-title">The Luxury Low-End</h2>
		 		<h3 class="page_title">The Luxury Low-End</h3>
<p>In a discrete graphics market awash with attention grabbing names and short-lived brands/models, it can be a thankless task trying to stand out from the rest of the middling crowd. Those who have fought this battle and lived know all about the various methods used to drum up attention for their products. One effective way is to make consumers feel obliged to pay more by associating the product with a classy and upmarket vibe. MSI has had some success with this marketing strategy in recent times. Witness its <a target="_blank" href="/features/view/71539">Diamond edition GeForce 6600 cards</a> , which came in stylish packaging extorting the excellent Chronicles of Riddick game bundled with it.</p>
<p>For the case of the MSI Diamond, it was not merely its appearance or packaging that got the five-star treatment. There was substance beneath the style as the card utilized better memory chips to achieve a clock speed of 800MHz DDR. Coincidentally or not, this was the exact same speed NVIDIA set for its own refresh of the GeForce 6600 many months later, which used DDR2 memory instead of DDR1. Therefore, the performance of the forward-looking Diamond was easily ahead of its peers (and NVIDIA) then and deservedly belonged to a premium class. Now, with the latest GeForce 6600 DDR2 cards taking away some of the limelight, MSI hopes to replicate this formula, but with the newer GeForce 6600. Looking to impress us again with this series, MSI has sent us two of its newest NX6600 Ares GeForce 6600 DDR2 256MB cards. Before we proceed to the technical details, let's all take a moment to admire MSI's chic packaging, with its sophisticated blend of black and gold.</p>
<p class="rtecenter"><img src="http://images.hardwarezone.com/upload/files/2010/06/63419a8451.jpg" title="GeForce 6600 SLI? That's possible with the MSI NX6600 Ares." alt="" /></p>			</div>
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