MSI NX6600 Diamond (AGP & PCIe Combo Review)
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Premium GeForce 6600 Graphics
Premium GeForce 6600 Graphics
By now you would have heard the news that NVIDIA's full GeForce 6600 lineup is available on both the PCIe x16 and the AGP 8x interface formats. Though the GeForce 6600 GT (AGP) had been retailing a couple of months back, the non-GT version on AGP is the latest edition and has just started hitting the retail front. The GeForce 6600 cards (on both interfaces) use cheaper DDR1 memory and are clocked far lower than the GeForce 6600 GT cards. In terms of feature support, both are identical, sans the SLI link for the PCIe version. MSI being NVIDIA's close add-in-board partner, they were naturally among the early birds to push their cards out to end-users first. However, we are not reviewing MSI's normal GeForce 6600 cards in this article, but a higher-class Diamond edition.
Right after introducing the specially equipped Diamond class NVIDIA nForce4 SLI motherboard (K8N Diamond), MSI brought over the same concept to their graphics card segment and the GeForce 6600 GPU was selected first to adopt this theme. Sporting far better specifications than standard GeForce 6600 cards and an exclusive game bundle as reflected by the Chronicles Of Riddick box package theme, the Diamond class GeForce 6600 cards are set to impress onlookers with their uniqueness and much greater overclocking potential without harming the card. For the AGP 8x interface, we have the MSI NX6600-VTD128 Diamond and for newer PCIe x16 endowed systems, there is the MSI NX6600-VTD128E Diamond. We will be reviewing both cards in this article. To find out how much better the Diamond editions are versus the stock GeForce 6600 cards, we outlined the below table to simplify matters. Also worth noting is how the Diamond editions fare in specs as compared to a stock GeForce 6600 GT:-
Technical Specs | MSI NX6600 Diamond | NVIDIA GeForce 6600 | NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT |
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GPU Clock | 400MHz | 300MHz | 500MHz |
Memory Clock | 400MHz (800MHz DDR) | 275MHz (550MHz DDR) | 500MHz (1000MHz DDR) - PCIe x16 450MHz (900MHz DDR) - AGP 8x |
Memory Type | Graphics DDR3 | Graphics DDR1 | Graphics DDR3 |
Going by the specifications, it seems that the MSI NX6600 Diamond editions are wedged right in between a normal GeForce 6600 and a GeForce 6600 GT. So despite the Diamond editions using a standard GeForce 6600 GPU, they are actually in a class of their own (and priced appropriately as well). Don't forget that MSI's Dynamic Overclocking Technology (D.O.T.) is also present for yet another 10% speed boost. MSI's warranty does cover the use of D.O.T., so there's little reason not to enable it for further performance gains - especially since these cards are very overclockable as we found out. Below, we list the common technical specifications that are applicable to both AGP and PCIe versions of the MSI NX6600 Diamond editions:-
Graphics Engine |
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Graphics Memory |
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RAMDAC |
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Connectors |
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Driver Support |
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Software Bundle |
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Game Bundle |
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Other Information |
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