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GeForce 6600 GT Pentium 4 Scaling Performance September 17, 2004 |
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Summary: A mainstream GeForce 6600 GT truly won't break the bank, but will its performance keep up with the latest games on slower Pentium 4 processors? Today Brandon examines the 6600 GT's performance when paired up with four different Pentium 4 Prescott processors. See how the GeForce 6600 GT, RADEON 9800 PRO, and GeForce 6800 fare when put to the grueling test!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 17 ) |
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)
| IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles | Page:: ( 2 / 17 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB - OpenGL
| Lock On: Modern Air Combat | Page:: ( 3 / 17 ) |
Lock On: Modern Air Combat – Direct3D
| UT 2004 | Page:: ( 4 / 17 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2004
| Splinter Cell | Page:: ( 5 / 17 ) |
Splinter Cell – Direct3D
| Tomb Raider | Page:: ( 6 / 17 ) |
Tomb Raider – Direct3D
| Halo | Page:: ( 7 / 17 ) |
Halo – Direct3D
| Far Cry mp_jungle | Page:: ( 8 / 17 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Far Cry 2xAA | Page:: ( 9 / 17 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Far Cry Jungle 4xAA | Page:: ( 10 / 17 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Jungle 2xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 11 / 17 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| DOOM 3 High Quality 8xAF | Page:: ( 12 / 17 ) |
DOOM 3 – OpenGL
| DOOM 3 High Quality 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 13 / 17 ) |
DOOM 3 – OpenGL
| Video Stress Test | Page:: ( 14 / 17 ) |
Half-Life2 – Direct3D
| HL2 VST 2xAA | Page:: ( 15 / 17 ) |
Half-Life2 – Direct3D
| VST 2xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 16 / 17 ) |
Half-Life2 – Direct3D
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 17 / 17 ) |
Looking over the performance results, we can see that the GeForce 6800 and GeForce 6600 GT are more CPU-dependant than RADEON 9800 PRO, although drivers are likely playing a role here also -- ATI has had over a year to tweak RADEON 9800’s performance after all. This was most evident in Half-Life 2 video stress test, where GeForce 6600 GT and GeForce 6800 performance both improved by nearly 40% at low resolutions by simply going from 2.8GHz to 3.0GHz.
Directly contrasting these results however were Tomb Raider and Far Cry, which are also DX9 titles. Our results with these games indicate you won’t see any performance benefits by upgrading to a faster processor: the frame rate remains unchanged all the way up to 3.4GHz. In these cases the graphics card you choose plays a more critical role in determining frame rate.
In light of all this information, when you factor in graphics card performance with current CPU prices, clearly 3.0GHz is the sweet spot right now. For just a few more dollars you can see some fairly nice performance gains. With a little bit of overclocking, you could potentially improve your performance even more.
Fortunately even the slowest LGA-775 Pentium 4, the 520 model, delivers good performance, even in demanding applications such as DOOM 3. The GeForce 6600 GT just missed 60 fps with our custom demo running in high quality mode at 1024x768x32 with 4xAA and 8xAF enabled. For $100 more, GeForce 6800 just misses 60 fps at 1280x1024 under the same conditions.
Hopefully with this information in hand you can better determine the graphics card/processor combination that’s right for you. As you can see though, the GeForce 6600 GT fares well against similar mainstream cards regardless of the processor used. Now we just need both PCI-E and AGP cards to hit the market so we can test the cards under different system combinations! With any luck, the first cards should start appearing in the next 2-3 weeks.