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Written by Adam Honek
Monday, December 13, 2004
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Page 6 of 6 Overclocking For those whom the speed of a brand new fast graphics card isn't enough we undertook some testing in order to reveal what levels of added performance one can exert from a stock standard Galaxy 6600GT. Before we conclude our findings one note we so heavily wish to emphasize is that although our sample was exactly a retail version (so not especially chosen as a better yield) overclocking is always a hit and miss situation. Any numbers we provide regarding tweaked core and memory frequencies should be taken with a pinch of salt. It has been proven however that a given revision of silicon performs within close range of each other so while our numbers do not guarantee such performance of every sample they can serve as an indicator to what's achievable. To ensure our increases in core and memory frequencies provided stable and arti-fact free results we ran 3dMark05, our end outcome yielded an increase of 60MHz over the standard 3D 500MHz core speed and 120MHz on the memory, in both cases an improvement equaling 12%.
Conclusion Galaxy's 6600GT PCI Express graphics card is one of potential, not only does it provide exciting levels of performance for those who wish to upgrade but also manages to achieve this quality without leaving one's pockets empty. For about $200 it proves to be faster than both the ATI Radeon 9800XT and Nvidia Geforce FX 5950 Ultra - both these technologies were regarded as high-end not so long ago. With the Galaxy 6600GT DOOM III for example - a graphically demanding game - is absolutely playable on its high quality setting and truly showcases what this latest Nvidia chipset technology can handle, even when put under extreme stress. A setback is that Galaxy refrains from including any bundled games as is often the case with other manufacturer’s, while this doesn't mean any less performance it could be a deciding factor in your purchase. The two year RTB warranty adds some reassurance should anything go wrong and we still find it truthful that 128MB of RAM is usually sufficient for this type of product - a mainstream graphics card destined for mainstream type use does not require and will not largely benefit from 256MB RAM due to its restricted memory bandwidth at high resolutions. If one considers the price to performance ratio and full Shader Model 3.0 support it is very difficult to fault Galaxy's 6600GT PCI Express offering, it supplies immensely fast and high quality gaming to those on an average budget with performance to spare, here is an upgrade destined to please equally consumer and pocket. Pros:
- Great mainstream performance
- DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 support
- 2 year RTB warranty
- Price/Performance ratio
- Native PCI Express GPU Cons:
- No games bundle Overall rating:
85%
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