Graphics
cards for home PCs usually fit into three categories. At the top
is the enthusiast gamer's card. These cards are the most expensive,
the most powerful and usually laden with features (these days
at least) and heavy duty cooling. Then we have the mainstream
or midrange area, which offers you more than just desktop display
capabilities and more often a hint of the power and speed of the
top end but without the associated cost. And finally at the bottom
end we have the budget line up which are usually designed for
simple desktop display with the occasional game at reduced display
enhancements.
From
NVIDIA comes the 6600GT card which fits into the top edge of the
midrange lineup. Of course this card has appeared when the keyword
is PCIe and at first this card was only available in PCIe format.
Now you can get an AGP version, but we are going to stick with
the original iteration of PCIe in this review looking at Albatron's
take on the 6600GT card with their Trinity series.
Specifications
Memory Size: 128MB DDR III
Memory Bus: 128-bit
Engine Clock: 500MHz
RAMDAC: 400MHz
Max. Resolution: 2048x1536@85Hz
Bus Standard: PCI Express
VGA Output: Yes
TV Tuner: No
TV-out: Yes
VIVO (Video-in. Video Out): No
DVI: Yes
WINDVD: Yes
WIN DVR: No
WINDVD Creator: Yes
Power DVD: No
Power Director: No
3D GAMES: ARX Fatalis Game Pack
The
box for the Albatron Trinity PC6600GT features a lot of foil
embossed imagery of a sci fi babe, with the logo's and
information panels arranged around her. The rear of the box
has windows with pertinent information for the card inside in
different languages. Opening the box, the first thing you will
see is the card itself wrapped in a thick static protection
bag and placed in shaped white foam.
Underneath
the foam is the extra's that come with the card; 4 disks of
software and a VIVO dongle with 5 ports (3 for HDTV). One thing
I was surprised not to see is an S-Vid cable to go with the
dongle, although generally speaking the ones that are included
with cards are usually not very long and not of a high quality
so not really a great loss.
The
card itself is built upon a blue PCB which makes a change from
the red that a lot of manufacturers choose. Copper ramsinks
as well as a copper fan and heatsink assembly on the GPU provide
the cooling for the PC6600GT. Sitting under the ramsinks is
2ns GDDR3 Ram. I'd like to be able to tell you who manufactured
the ram and some more details, but those 'sinks are really stuck
on well.
On
the tail end of the card are the capacitors that regulate power
and being a midrange card we have no extra power input. Opposite
the PCIe interface is the SLI interface allowing you to connect
to a second card and increase your performance on motherboards
that cater for this.
The
rear of the card is uneventful but does give you a clearer idea
of the PCB colour.
The
IO panel has a VIVO port, DVI port and a standard 15 pin D-Sub
VGA port. Just of note here, the Albatron PC6600GT features not
only an integrated TV encoder but also an integrated HDTV encoder,
which could make this card quite attractive to the HTPC crowd.
Test
Setup
Albatron
PX925X Pro, Intel Pentium 4 520 (3.2GHz), 2 x 512MB Kingston HyperX
PC2-5400 (4-4-4-12), 2x 80GB Maxtor 7200 SATA, Windows XP w/SP2,
Forceware 66.93
We'll
be using FRAPS to record framerates in all our tests, playing
the game as anybody would (trying to stay alive), firing weapons,
dodging attacks and so on. Unlike our past video game tests, all
benchmarks will be done with the audio "on", as we're
trying to illustrate real gaming experiences, and I doubt any
of our readers mute the audio during gameplay.
Test
Software will be:
Doom
3 - Making good use of the BFG, rocket launcher and plasma
gun (the most graphically intense weapons), we'll be kicking ass
on the Caverns Area 1 level, specifically the part right after
reaching the bottom in the cargo lift.
Half
Life 2 - can be very forgiving on hardware, or at least more
forgiving than other modern games with the right settings. However
when the action gets going and there is a lot on screen, it does
help to have a bit of horsepower pushing the graphics. We ran
through part of 'Follow Freeman', specifically the part as you
exit the Combine building to take on the 3 striders.
Far
Cry - featuring lots of outdoor areas with spectacular nature
effects such as realistic water and beautiful vista's that all
add up to a virtual landscape that stretches off into the distance.
We ran through the Regulator level, specifically the part with
the 'flying fox' lines with Far Cry at patch 1.3 and everything
set to high.
Unreal
Tournament 2004 - We loaded up CTF-Maul with 31 bots, everything
set to highest levels and tested the gameplay.
Need
For Speed: Underground 2 - NFSU2 features a lot of particle
effects, fogging and reflective surfaces. We tricked an RX-8 and
went for a blast around town awaiting the rain.
The
driver settings were manually configured for Anti-Aliasing and
Anisotropic Filtering (on or off), and set to "Quality".
All games were set to their highest playable game settings unless
otherwise stated. As a comparison, we used the HIS Excalibur X600XT.
Doom
3
We
were limited to running at High Quality settings to get playable
rates, which in actual fact is pretty high for a mid range 128MB
card in Doom 3.
|
Albatron
6600GT
|
Min
|
Max
|
Avg
|
|
No
AA/AF, 1280x1024
|
25
|
62
|
46.23
|
|
4xAA/4xAF,
1024x768
|
20
|
62
|
41.13
|
The
Albatron PC6600GT, handles D3 very well indeed. The majority
of the game played at 1024x768 runs at not much less than 60fps,
although heavier texture areas do tend to slow it down. Add
4xAA and 4xAF to the mix and it does begin to churn a little,
but due to the dark nature of the imagery on screen it's not
too noticeable. The graph can be a little deceiving in this
respect, but it's only in the heaviest of action that you notice
the dips actually affecting gameplay. Another thing that is
a side effect of the darkness in the game is that anti-aliasing
isn't as important, allowing you to ramp up the resolution to
1280x1024 (No AA, No AF) and still get playable rates with a
nice image. In Comparison with the X600XT however, another card
that is aimed at the same market as the Albatron PC6600GT, you
see a lot more dips in the graph. In all fairness, the X600XT
is not much more than a 9600XT from the previous generation
with a PCIe interface, and it has already been superseded, but
the difference is almost half again in favour of the PC6600GT
when it comes to frame rates which is a lot more than I expected.
Image
Quality
1024x768,
No AA, No AF
6600GT
left, X600XT right
Image
quality between the Albatron PC6600GT and the X600XT is pretty
much the same, both are very good although I found the PC6600GT's
image to be a little sharper (which I personally prefer anyway).
You certainly wouldn't notice the differences while playing, except
of course that the X600XT wouldn't run to well at these settings.
Dropping it to 800x600 you may find playing with 2xAA and 4xAF
OK on the X600XT, but the Albatron PC6600GT's 1024x768, 4xAA,
4xAF makes it a no brainer.
1024x768,
4xAA, 4xAF
6600GT
left, X600XT right
NEXT
