XFX 6600GT SLI Video Card Review :: The Card

One thing that's always bothered me about modern video cards is they tend to get longer and longer in length. I use a SFF (the SB95v2 from Shuttle) every day. A 6800GT won't fit into the SB95v2. XFX's 6600GT is about a inch longer than the PCI Express X16 slot, allowing a easy fit into the SB95v2 without any issue as to space. Power requirements are minimal as most mid-range and high-end video cards on the market today require an external power connector to function correctly. The 6600GT draws less than 75 watts of power, allowing it to use the power provided by the PCI Express X16 slot.

Card

PCI Express

Cooling on the XFX 6600GT is provided by a small 7-fin cooling fan covering the GPU. A heat sink is not provided for the memory chips. There are 8 16MB 2ns DDR memory chips providing 128MB of 500MHz DDR memory. This provides the card with a maximum theoretical memory bandwidth of 16GB/second of memory bandwidth. 6600GT has 8 pixel pipelines and a core clock speed of 500MHz. This provides a maximum fill rate of 4GB a second.

Fan

Rear

I/O

One nice touch on the card is the inclusion of dual DVI-I ports. In the past, CRT monitors were prevalent and the D-sub connector was the only one needed to connect a monitor to the computer. Today, LCD monitors are the norm. An addition that comes on many LCD monitors is the DVI-I interface. The 6600GT from XFX includes two DVI-I connectors, allowing the use of two DVI-I connectors with the card. Two D-Sub to DVI-I connectors are included in the bundle allowing the card to use two CRT monitors or a LCD monitor and a LCD monitor. XFX also includes a TV-Out port allowing you to play PC games on your television.