![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , September 07, 2004
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT Preview
NVIDIA has provided a reference sample of their mainstream killer, the GeForce 6600GT. We put it under the full load of our evaluation suite. Inside we evaluate the 6600GT's gameplay performance and image quality using six real-world games and come away with some surprising results.
DOOM 3
(OpenGL)
Ah, a card we haven’t tested in our DOOM 3 Hardware Guide. NVIDIA claims the GeForce 6600GT is THE mainstream card for DOOM 3. We shall see.
We are using the full retail version of DOOM 3 and leaving each video card's driver control panel to “Application Preference” for AA and AF. We set the DOOM 3 in-game quality setting and resolution that played the best on each card. Remember, in DOOM 3’s “High Quality” mode, 8XAF is automatically enabled.
For our manual run-through we chose the “Enpro” level and started our run-through from the beginning to halfway through the mission. We played the game in a normal fashion, which means each run-through on each card will be a little different, but still represents the same course through the level.
You may click on the graph below for a much larger version if this smaller version is hard for you to read.
NVIDIA wasn’t fibbing when they said this card would be the DOOM 3 video card in the mainstream. We were able to play through DOOM 3 at an amazing resolution of 1280x1024 in High Quality mode with 8XAF enabled. For comparison's sake, we were able to play DOOM 3 at 800x600 at Medium Quality for the Radeon X600XT, and even then performance was slower and dropped down lower than the GeForce 6600GT.
We did try 1600x1200 in DOOM 3 at High Quality on the GeForce 6600GT, but performance just slowed down way too much to call this playable. We did however find the game playable at 1024x768 in High Quality mode with 2XAA enabled. The performance was a tad slower than at 1280x1024 with NoAA however, but the game was still very playable if you wanted to have AA enabled at 1024x768. We found that 1280x1024 in High Quality mode provided the best balance of performance and image quality.
Image Quality:
We did not notice any effect differences or other differences in image quality between the two video cards. Obviously being able to run at High Quality versus Medium Quality and being able to have 8XAF enabled at a higher resolution helped a lot overall in increasing image quality. With those factors in mind, the GeForce 6600GT allowed a higher level of image quality with faster performance in DOOM 3.