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- Date:
- Thursday , August 12, 2004
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 Preview
Today NVIDIA unveils a brand new GeForce 6 series GPU that is aimed directly at the mainstream market. Inside we give a brief preview of what NVIDIA is bringing to the table.
Introduction:
NVIDIA’s last couple product cycles have taken some flack from consumers about product choices that they have made. It started when NVIDIA created the GeForce 4 “MX” series which was not actually based upon GeForce 4 series technology, even though it was labeled so. Their next troublesome spot was the previous GeForceFX series. Getting off to a rocky start they did eventually make it a competitive product in the mainstream market with the GeForceFX 5700Ultra as well as with the GeForceFX 5900XT. Part of this success was due to the fact that the GeForceFX 5700Ultra and GeForceFX 5900XT were based on the same architecture sporting all the new architectural features of its big brothers. NVIDIA has learned from their past and has seen the success of scaling a new architecture down into lower market segments.
So with that, today NVIDIA is announcing the GeForce 6600 series which is aimed directly at the mainstream user. NVIDIA has billed the GeForce 6600 series as "THE" GPU for mainstream DOOM 3 performance. NVIDIA is claiming enjoyable performance at high quality settings in DOOM 3 with the top card in this new lineup.
The lineup:
As we discussed in our GeForce 6 series tech article NVIDIA built this architecture to scale all the way from the high end directly to the low end. The GeForce 6800Ultra with 16 pixel-pipelines, 6800GT with 16 pixel-pipelines, 6800 with 12 pixel-pipelines and 6800LE with 8 pixel-pipelines are all based on the NV40 GPU. All of the aforementioned video cards operate on a 256-bit memory bus.
The new GeForce 6600 series however is based upon the new NV43 GPU. The lineup consists of the GeForce 6600GT and 6600 both with 8 pixel-pipelines and a 128-bit memory bus. The GeForce 6600GT comes with 128MB of GDDR3 and will be clocked at 500MHz core frequency and 500MHz memory frequency. The GeForce 6600 comes with 128MB of DDR1 and is clocked at a core speed of 300MHz and the memory speeds will be set by the manufacturer at their discretion.
Initially these cards will debut in PCI-Express form factor. The NV43 GPU has a native PCI-Express implementation. Since NVIDIA has its HSI bridging chip they can convert that PCI-Express bus back to AGP format for AGP versions down the road if deemed necessary.
One very important feature to note is that these video cards do not require any external power at all. They operate completely off of the PCI-Express connection.
Technology:
The GeForce 6600GT and 6600 completely support every feature of the NV40 architecture. This means you have full support for Microsoft’s DirectX9.0c Shader Model 3.0. The GeForce 6600 series also has the same 64-bit Floating Point framebuffer OpenEXR format support that the GeForce 6800 series has with true Internal 128-bit (FP32) Floating Point precision. UltraShadow II and the built in programmable video processor of the GeForce 6800 series are also present.
Also available on the GeForce 6600GT PCI-Express video card is NVIDIA’s SLI technology. By purchasing two of these video cards and the required adapter end users will be able to put them into dual PCI-Express graphics ports on your motherboard and enjoy even more performance.
In our NV40 tech article we talked a little about the new programmable video chip that is inside the GPU. The new GeForce 6600 series lineup also has this same video chip that is capable of producing consumer electronics video quality. It supports advanced de-interlacing, inverse 3:2 pull down, motion estimation and even WMV9 acceleration. All of these features add up to create a higher level of video quality out of your video card. The fact that it is programmable also leaves way for further improvements and additions.