Introduction

With its $200 price tag, NVIDIA’s GeForce 6600 GT is designed to appeal to the mainstream consumer who wants DirectX9 graphics and good performance, but doesn’t want to pay a fortune for it. As we saw in our GeForce 6600 GT Performance Preview a week ago, NVIDIA has pulled it off quite well, with performance that’s competitive with last year’s high-end flagship DX9 offerings, but what happens when you pair the 6600 GT with a slower CPU? After all, just as most mainstream consumers don’t have the desire to spend $500 on a graphics card, most don’t have the budget for the latest and greatest CPU either.

To answer this question, we’ve gone back to speeds as low as 2.8GHz, the slowest clock speed available on Intel’s LGA-775 PCI Express platform. These chips are currently selling for under $170, making them decent bargains, but if you really want the best deal on a P4, you can find the 3.0GHz Pentium 4 online for about $15 more. We also included 3.2GHz and 3.4GHz performance results as well.

On the graphics side, we’ve paired the GeForce 6600 GT against GeForce 6800 and RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB. The GeForce 6800 ships at much slower clocks than the 6600 GT (325MHz core/350MHz memory versus 500/500 on the 6600 GT), but thanks to its 12-pixel pipeline architecture it features similar fill rates, 3.9 Gigatexels/second in the case of the GeForce 6800 as opposed to the 6600 GT’s 4.0 Gigatexels/second. The GeForce 6800’s 256-bit memory interface gives it a memory bandwidth advantage over the 6600 GT of 6.4 Gigabytes/second however, which should allow it to perform better at high resolutions, especially with AA/AF enabled. ATI’s alternative mainstream offering to NVIDIA is now the RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB, which can be found for $200 or less at most stores.

System Setup

Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz “Prescott”
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz “Prescott”
Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz “Prescott”
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz “Prescott”

ABIT IC7-G Max II Advance
ABIT AA8-DuraMax

1GB OCZ EL DDR400 Platinum Edition Rev 2
1GB Corsair XMS2 5400 DDR2

ATI RADEON 9800 PRO
Driver version CATALYST 4.8

Leadtek WinFast A400 (GeForce 6800)
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT reference card
Driver version 65.76

250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache

Windows XP Professional SP1

DirectX 9.0c

Benchmarks

Half-Life 2 Video Stress Test
Lock On: Modern Air Combat (Mig-29 custom demo)
Unreal Tournament 2004 (T3 custom demo)
IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles (The Black Death track)
Splinter Cell (FS custom demo)
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (Beyond3D custom demo)
Halo: Combat Evolved (stock benchmark)
Far Cry 1.2 (custom demo for mp_jungle, SM2.0b and SM3.0 paths used)
DOOM 3 (gameplay custom demo)