Preface
NVIDIA introduced GeForce 6600/6600GT graphics cards on the last quarter of 2004. These
cards are based on TSMC's (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) .11µ technique and the graphics processing unit (GPU) is called NV43 as almost everyone knows these days.
These graphics cards are directed to be budget class products by eg. whittling pipelines of the NV40-architecture and by improving
the line width compared to the "old" .13µ production line. In Finland GeForce 6600/6600GT cards were available for dealers quite soon after the cards were
were published and the supply is extremely good as we speak. The cards are priced between 200 and 300 depending on the manufacturer.
GeForce 6600/6600GT graphics gards are available for AGP and PCI-E chip sets.
NVIDIA is able to offer another budget class graphics card for consumers: GeForce 6800LE (NV40 GPU), and it is competing
in the same price/speed class than GeForce 6600GT. Skenegroup is going to publish an article about GeForce 6800LE card as soon, as we'll be able
to run the sufficient tests.
In the last (in finnish) article we covered
already some of the qualities that NVIDIA's GeForce 6600GT is offering to consumers, but in this article we'll go through more thoroughly
the NV43 structure and compare it to the older NVIDIA's GPU's.
For this article Leadtek
delivered WinFast A6600GT TDH graphics gard (AGP / 128MB DDR3 / retail) for Skenegroup's tests. The card is priced around 230 in Europe.
In Finland the card was priced at 214 the time this review was first writen. For comparisons some of the previous generation cards were taken into
our gentle care, including NV30 based "high-end" and "mid-price" cards such as GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and FX 5900SE. For this article (and for now
on) we changed some of the testing softwares for OpenGL and D3D. For the "hardest clockers of the Universe" there are some suggestive
overclocking test included as well.
The retail package and the content
Leadtek's WinFast A6600GT TDH graphic cards are delivered in retail packages for users. The package is quite small compared eg. MSI's retail packages
and the visual side is almost demure. The card itself with the supplementary material is wrapped in plastic.
Normally Leadtek has been known with quite extensive bundle, but this time it's fair to say we were a bit disapointed. Besides WinFast A6600GT
TDH card the package included the following items: the manual, quick installation quide (for those who are too anxious), TV-out cabel
(with 9-pin mini-din, HDTV/S Video adapter, DVI / VGA adapter, 4-pin powercable and molex leg.
The driver CD includes eg. NVIDIA ForceWare 66.93 (WHQL), AGP, WDN drivers, WinFox 2, WinFast DVD, WinFast PVR, MuVee 3 and Coloreal softwares. For
gamers the package can be a small disapointment because Leadtek has included only two games with retail package:
Prince of Persian: The Sands of Time (2 CD) and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (DVD).
So en bloc quite modest supplementary material.
NV43 graphics prosessing unit
NVIDIA's NV43 GPU (Rev. A2) is based NV40 gpu, mut the older IBM's .13µ technique has been overrun by TSMC's Taiwan made .11µ technique.
The new improved production technique has offered significantly lower manufacturing expenses and the chips are more easily available.
The smaller .11µ line width has quite naturally impact on some physical quantities such as clock speed, power consumption and heat generation.
NV43 gpu consists 143 milj. transistors, which is a bit larger count than in NV30 gpu's.
The NV43 GPU has been designed originally to be native PCI-E chip (SLI support), but via NVIDIA's HSI chip (High-Speed-Interconnect bridge chip)
NV43 is scaled to fit for AGP. Naturally HSI lifts up the AGP card's price a bit.
Pixel pipelines has been cut off from NV40 GPU and in NV43 there are 8 pixel pipelines (8 x 1) and the NV43 is capable of generating only four (4)
pixels (ROP / color write) in one clock cycle. Z / stencil tests can be made 8 (8 x 0) in one cycle and each of the pixel pipelines consists of
two (2) FP shader units (sahder unit1 and shader unit2, both with mini ALU) that are capable of calculating 8 / 4 commands or pixels in a cycle
(FP ALU ops per pixel pipeline) dependin on texture sampling (TEX ops/texture sampling).
Also the number of vertex shader units has been cut down from NV40 and the NV43 has three (3) of them. Memory bus is reduced to 128 bits
(64 x 2) from 256 bits (64 x 4).
NV43 GPU's 4 ROP units and 128 bit memory bus can be limiting factor for large resolutions (over 1280x1024) and antialiasing especially
in new 3D-games, but the "final" speed of the graphics card is depending very much on the software used. NV43 GPU supports
the same interface extensions as NV40 (ie. OpenGL 1.5 & Shader Model 3.0).
WinFast A6600GT TDH
Leadtek WinFast A6600GT TDH's PCB is similar compared to NVIDIA's reference cards. The PCB is manufactured in Taiwan (Rev. A) and it is
quite small in dimensions having lots of empty space between components especially between back plate and GPU. HSI can be found near the AGP bus
under the aluminium heatsink. Conserning TV-coding or DVI there are no circuits to be found, because Leadtek has come into using integrated
aspects of NV43 in WinFast A6600GT TDH. The molex power connector is situated on the right edge of the card.
GeForce 6600GT's clock frequency is 500 MHz in 3D and 300 MHz in 2D. Memory chips are Samsung's 2.0 ns (K4J55323QF-GC20 - GDDR3 1000 MHz) with
FBGA packaking and they run at 900 MHz (DDR3). All the memory chips (4 x 32 Mb = 128 MB) are situated in the front end of the card. There is also
very engrossing marking conserning the amount of memory. Some sources claim that some of the NVIDIA's partners might delivere GeForce 6600GT
with 256 MB of DDR1 or DDR3 memory. See picture below.
Leadtek has replaced NVIDIA's reference cooling with their own design called Leadtek Unique Ultra cooling fan which consist of an aluminium
heatsink and a fan. According to Leadtek's specs the fan yields 27 dB. The memory chips have no cooling of their own, but the heatsink / fan combo
deliveres some air flow to them. What comes to the cooling capacity, the Leadtek's WinFast A6600GT TDH is adequate enough and reasonably quiet. More
info about the cooling system is to be found on the next page.
HSI has NVIDIA's reference heatsink on it.
At the back plate there is to be found VGA, DVI and 9-pin mini-din connectors (for AV and S-Video connections.
Leadtek WinFast A6600GT TDH (NV43)
