Gigabyte GV-NX66T256D Graphics Card

Recently, we looked at some top notch gaming cards such as

the 7800GTX 512 and the X1800XT. Gigabyte has now sent us their adaptation of

NVIDIA's 6600 GT. It is interesting because it has fan-less cooling, which

Gigabyte has, rather dramatically, named Silent Pipeline 2. The cooling

technology works like a charm and really does keep the card ultra cool, even

when we over clocked it to 515 MHz for the core and 1.13 GHz for the memory

speed.

The bundle is pretty measly with just a video box that

connects to the S-Video port on the card and a VGA to DVI adapter. Manufacturers

really need to up the ante in bundled games for mid-range cards.

Our test rig consisted of the ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard, 1GB

DDR400 RAM, 120GB Seagate SATA drive and the AMD Athlon X2 4800+. This card is

an entry level gamer's card, so don't expect it to run the games with all

their bells and whistles on. You will  need

to tone down your graphics settings a couple of notches . The card handled lower

resolutions quite well but the minute we went up to 1600x1200, with even 2xAA

enabled, it gave us paltry frames. Note that in Doom 3, we kept the quality at

ultra levels, so if you don't mind seeing slightly lesser detail you could try

high quality. The game just doesn't look the same at those settings though.

The card did too well in Far Cry, except at 1600x1200, where it gave just 29.6,

again showing that it can't handle maximum settings at all. Looking at the

scores, it does not give you a high FPS at max settings but it lets you play at

pretty high levels. This is due to a cranked up core, from 400 MHz to a whopping

500, and we overclocked it a bit more to 515 MHz!

Bottom Line: If you are

a gamer with around 10k to spend on a graphics card, this should be at the top

of your list.

Varun Dubey