ASUS eXtreme N6600GT Video Card Review :: The Card

ASUS eXtreme N6600GT
Brand	ASUS
Model	eXtreme N6600GT
Graphics Chip	NV43
Graphics Memory Type	GDDR3
Memory (MB)	128
Graphics Core Clock (MHz)	500
Memory Clock (MHz)	500
Memory Speed (ns)	2.0
RAMDAC Frequency (MHz)	Dual 400
Active Cooling on Graphics Chip	Yes
Heatsink on Memory	Yes
Video Capture	Yes
Ports
Dual Monitor Support	Yes
VGA Out	DVI-I, D-Sub
Video In and Out	TV Out
Package and Support
Printed Manual	Yes
Driver CD	Yes
Performance Tool Software	ASUS Smart Doctor
Major Games	Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising
Major Software	Power Director, Media Show
VR Glasses	No
DVD Player Software	Asus DVD
Video Recording Software	Media Show

One annoying thing about modern video cards is their tendency to be longer than the PCI Express or AGP slot by a good 2 or 3 inches. This may not matter to those using a med-tower ATX case, but I like to use a SFF (Small Form Factor) PC like a Shuttle XPC. In this case, the 6600GT from ASUS is about 1 inch longer than a normal PCI Express X16 slot, making it an easy fit for a Shuttle XPC that has a motherboard supporting PCIe. Another nice touch is the lack of a need for an external power connector, as found in most high-end videocards today.

Cooling on the card is rather nice for a mid-range video card. A nine fin radial fan and a funnel like system that cools the GPU cover the chips core. Heat sinks cover the memory, which effectively cools the memory. Asus chose to clock the core of the video card at 515MHz, 15MHz higher than the default clock of a reference 6600GT. This gives a fillrate of about 4120 Megapixels a second (8 pixel pipelinesx515 MHz).

Cooling

Memory on the ASUS card is 8 16MB 1.6ns DDR-3 memory chips. This gives a maximum memory of 128MB. The memory speed is clocked at 500 MHz DDR. This gives a maximum memory bandwidth of 16 GB/second. Interestingly, the specs on the 6600GT are identical in fillrate, memory bandwidth to the 5800 Ultra of early 2002. Of course, the card has more features and better performance than that card.

Memory

The 6600GT from ASUS is capable of SLI mode. SLI stands for Scalable Link Interface, allowing for two identical video cards to work together increasing performance in select applications by up to 100%. Note, in order for SLI to be enabled you need an SLI motherboard, 2 cards, and games to be profiled on NVIDIA's driver. SLI has 3 modes of operation: AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering), SFR (Split Frame Rendering) and compatibility mode. AFR has each card render one whole frame at a time. SFR splits the load between two cards. Compatibility mode occurs when no profile exists for the game in the driver.

I/O ports

Input and output options on the 6600GT are similar to virtually every other video card on the market today. Present on the 6600GT are a DVI-I port, a D-Sub port, and a S-Video port. The use of dual monitors is of course possible with a DVI+VGA monitor cable or two VGA cables using an included adapter.

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