My leadtek 6600GT

[Acanthus]

Hi guys, i have been waiting for a PCI-E 6800GT for quite a while now and im not willing to shell out over MSRP for the part, so i have decided to temporarily settle on the 6600GT until prices stabilize and SLI motherboards are out in quantity.

I was upgrading from a Abit geforce FX 5600 Ultra 256MB with VIVO. The card has served me well but just couldnt push new titles at their highest settings (namely battlefield vietnam and world of warcraft). After putting in a lot of research and using my past experiences with leadtek i chose the leadtek 6600GT.

Packaging:

Came with prince of persia, a few game demos, and a driver cd. The card also came with all the neccesary cables for HDTV output (component) and Svideo as well. I chose the bundle without Doom III because it was about $12 cheaper and i have no interest in the game right now (ill more than likely get it when i get my 6800/6800s).

Installtion:

It was a breeze to install on my Abit AG-8 motherboard, just inserted the card, fired up the pc, and reinstalled the nvidia drivers (i uninstalled and driver cleanered before removing the FX).

Image Quality: I noticed no change in image quality running the same settings in windows (1600x1200x32@85hz) the colors are just as crisp and clean as my other cards, and a digital vibrance tweak makes the colors look amazing (if you have an NVIDIA card and havent tried this feature, i strongly suggest taking a look). My screen is a viewsonic P95f+ 19".

Overclocking:

The cooling on the card was excellent, im now running the card at the coolbits autodetected settings of 570mhz core, 1.14ghz memory. (default is 500/1000). The GPU under heavy load after a couple hours only hits 63C. I have not tried going beyond the autodetect settings.

In closing id just like to say thanks for reading my experience with this card, Leadtek has another winner in my book

Rig:
Intel Pentium 4 Prescott @ 3.9ghz
Abit AG-8 Motherboard
Leadtek Geforce 6600GT 128MB
OCZ PC4400 Gold 1024MB (2x512)
Antec 550w Truecontrol PSU
Koolance case and watercooling system (CPU only)

 

[otispunkmeyer]

yeah the digital vibrance is a very very neat feature....my tft is just ablaze with colour even on a low setting, tho it does over saturate colours when watching dvd and especially tv. the aver media DVB-T digital tuner card i have maynot produce the best images any way but sometimes the digital vibrance over saturates colours with red in them.

i have the leadtek 6800GT and i flippin love it, its a heavy card with a huge copper heat sink both sides i love it for its shear awesome-ness. doesnt oc as good as you'd expect but it bests ultra speeds which is more than i could of asked of it anyway after all its a gt not a ultra

packageing is excellent too, tho i got not component out leads.

i got prince of persia and splinter cell pandora tomoro in the box

as a bonus deal i also got CoD and Far Cry from the retailer

 

[kamranziadar]

Ok surprise me by saying you have no interest in DOOM 3, i finished it last week trust me you missed the best game out there i ranked DOOM 3 better that Half Life 2.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: kamranziadar
Ok surprise me by saying you have no interest in DOOM 3, i finished it last week trust me you missed the best game out there i ranked DOOM 3 better that Half Life 2.

the repetitive strain injury that is DOOM3's monsters popping out of closet works for some people but not for me, scary the first time yes....then it was just boring, and expected

 

[Acanthus]

Its not that i dont want to play doom 3, i want the best experience the 1st time i play it (6800s or dual 6800s).

 

[KDKPSJ]

I am very interested in 6600GT, especially from Leadtek. Only thing I need to know is its noise level. How do you think about its stock HSF's sound?

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
yeah the digital vibrance is a very very neat feature....my tft is just ablaze with colour even on a low setting, tho it does over saturate colours when watching dvd and especially tv. the aver media DVB-T digital tuner card i have maynot produce the best images any way but sometimes the digital vibrance over saturates colours with red in them.

i have the leadtek 6800GT and i flippin love it, its a heavy card with a huge copper heat sink both sides i love it for its shear awesome-ness. doesnt oc as good as you'd expect but it bests ultra speeds which is more than i could of asked of it anyway after all its a gt not a ultra

packageing is excellent too, tho i got not component out leads.

i got prince of persia and splinter cell pandora tomoro in the box

as a bonus deal i also got CoD and Far Cry from the retailer

actually i forgot, pandora tomorrow was bundled as well.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: everydae
I am very interested in 6600GT, especially from Leadtek. Only thing I need to know is its noise level. How do you think about its stock HSF's sound?

I cant hear it in the case over my case fans. (120mm slow spinners)

 

[KDKPSJ]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: everydae
I am very interested in 6600GT, especially from Leadtek. Only thing I need to know is its noise level. How do you think about its stock HSF's sound?

I cant hear it in the case over my case fans. (120mm slow spinners)

Great to hear that! I guess I don't have to wait for Silencer for 6600GT comes out.

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: everydae
I am very interested in 6600GT, especially from Leadtek. Only thing I need to know is its noise level. How do you think about its stock HSF's sound?

It's quiet. And WAY quieter than the stock HSF on my 3500+ Winnie...

 

[Gentle]

I've got the XFX Geforce 6600GT AGP and it's no louder than my case fans..

But then again, some people won't be satisfied unless it runs totally silent.

Gentle

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: kamranziadar
Ok surprise me by saying you have no interest in DOOM 3, i finished it last week trust me you missed the best game out there i ranked DOOM 3 better that Half Life 2.

worst game of 2004, easily.
i put 30 minutes into the game, it sucked.

Far Cry,
Chronicles of Riddick,
HL2,
Need for speed underground 2

all are better games, some of which literally kicked ass, Doom3 was nothing compared to these in coolness or fun factor.

 

[Acanthus]

Update: After stability testing for over 24 hours, the card is perfectly stable at 570/1140.

 

[Trizzay]

Hey Acanthus, where did you purchase your card? I'm planning to order a LeadTek 6600GT next week.

This is probably a stupid question, but how does coolbits work? I'm trying to decide between the regualr 6600GT or the Extreme Edition which is clocked to 550/1120. It sounds like you were able to overclock to those speeds, so if it's fairly simple I might just go that route.

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: Trizzay
Hey Acanthus, where did you purchase your card? I'm planning to order a LeadTek 6600GT next week.

This is probably a stupid question, but how does coolbits work? I'm trying to decide between the regualr 6600GT or the Extreme Edition which is clocked to 550/1120. It sounds like you were able to overclock to those speeds, so if it's fairly simple I might just go that route.

I overclocked to similar speeds (slightly higher). I wouldn't spend extra money just to get your card to a performance level you can achieve in five minutes.

Coolbits info

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Trizzay
Hey Acanthus, where did you purchase your card? I'm planning to order a LeadTek 6600GT next week.

This is probably a stupid question, but how does coolbits work? I'm trying to decide between the regualr 6600GT or the Extreme Edition which is clocked to 550/1120. It sounds like you were able to overclock to those speeds, so if it's fairly simple I might just go that route.

Newegg, and that link tells all

 

[RajunCajun]

Last weekend I received my 2nd Leadtek 6600GT PCIe card (1st one kept rebooting my system and showed artifacts - RMA it went!). For extra insurance I added PCI slot cooling fan blowing right onto the card. This card runs perfect AND it's very quiet (but PCI cooling fan is heard when speed is high). Idle temps are about 37c, and after running Far Cry for a good while the temp only went up to 62c.

I purchased a retail WITH Doom3 (plus came with the other 2 games) for the few $$ more. Would have eventually bought Doom3 anyway, but not at what they're selling for now. Paid $193 shipped from www.buyxg.com. Yeah, I know what reputation they have, but I had a very good buying experience. Even though the 1st card was bad, the RMA process went great - couldn't have asked for better.

Checking now the price seems to have gone up some. This same card at newegg was $20 more at the time (this was before Christmas).

I bought HL2, but haven't installed it yet (was waiting on the card first). Of course, Doom3 runs like a beast - very fast and beautiful. Halo is terrific; the textures are so much more bright and colorful. Oh, and it's fast! The timedemo, running with PS2, gave me 83fps @1280x1024 with everything maxed out. This was a nice upgrade from my previous eVGA FX5900SE. Even that card ran these games great, but there was a noticeable difference between the two.

 

[VIAN]

Ok surprise me by saying you have no interest in DOOM 3, i finished it last week trust me you missed the best game out there i ranked DOOM 3 better that Half Life 2.

Don't even bother with that statement, I feel the same way, but we are like needles in a haystack here.

worst game of 2004, easily.
i put 30 minutes into the game, it sucked.

People that haven't finished the game shouldn't even be talking about it without experiencing it comepletely. Unlike your 30 minutes, I dumped about 25 hours into it and I loved it and the story was better than HL2's 15 hour game.

Next week, I'm gonna buy an eVGA 6600GT, just because it's cheaper, still a good company however and doesn't come with bundles I don't care for.

 

[Relion]

Grettings

Also thats great news for me
Got a Leadtek 6600 GT but mobo arrives til tumorro

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: VIAN

Ok surprise me by saying you have no interest in DOOM 3, i finished it last week trust me you missed the best game out there i ranked DOOM 3 better that Half Life 2.

Don't even bother with that statement, I feel the same way, but we are like needles in a haystack here.

worst game of 2004, easily.
i put 30 minutes into the game, it sucked.

People that haven't finished the game shouldn't even be talking about it without experiencing it comepletely. Unlike your 30 minutes, I dumped about 25 hours into it and I loved it and the story was better than HL2's 15 hour game.

Next week, I'm gonna buy an eVGA 6600GT, just because it's cheaper, still a good company however and doesn't come with bundles I don't care for.

HDTV capability was what sold me on it, as well as leadtek quality. They usually have a better cooling solution and faster than stock memory.