$200 Graphics Showdown

[klah]

http://www.extremetech.com/art.../0,1558,1739664,00.asp

6600GT
Despite having only 128MB of memory, AOpen's card managed to trounce the X700 Pro in almost every test.
...
A few games that use a rather large amount of texture RAM, like some massively multiplayer online games, may run into a few performance problems with this 128MB card, but for the most part, it's a lot of bang for the buck.

X700 Pro
Certainly, this card isn't bad. It's not like it's dog-slow, has compatibility problems, or makes more noise than a hair dryer. It has none of those problems, and in fact, the 256MB of RAM provided may prove to be a big benefit in a few games that use a very large amount of textures. But there's really no room for second place in the graphics business, and at the $200 price point, that's exactly what this card is. A GeForce 6600GT simply outperforms it in almost every situation, and sometimes by quite a sizeable margin. It may be good, but we simply can't recommend it when there are such clearly superior competitors.

Another review of the same cards for comparison:
<edit> wrong link

 

[housecat]

zing!

 

[IAteYourMother]

Go nVidia.

 

[naruto1988]

this makes my radeon 9800 pro sad =p oh well, my next computer might go SLI if this technology proves itself worthy.

 

[klah]

Originally posted by: naruto1988

this makes my radeon 9800 pro sad

They should have included one since it is still in the same ~$200 price range.

 

[Slaimus]

Tha 6800LE is around that price too, and it beats the 6600GT at very high res or high AA by virtue of its 256-bit memory, although the 6600GT is pretty well ahead for average resolutions. The potential of unlocking the pipes should be not overlooked though.

 

[gobucks]

uh, from the reviews i've seen, the 6800LE is barely faster than the 5900XT, which is slower than the 5950 Ultra, which is slower than the 6600GT. Also, the cheapest 6800LE is like $230, like $50 higher than the 6600GT.

 

[Slaimus]

http://www.au-ja.org/review-3d2004s-48.phtml