Anandtech's 6600 AGP Review

[swaaye]

Interesting read. Fabulous card. BUT,

What on earth happened to the 9700 PRO vs the 9800 PRO. Isn't that a little extreme?!!
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2277&p=8

 

[Nick]

I assume it's a Radeon 9600 Pro instead of a 9700 Pro...

 

[dan2097]

I assume it's a Radeon 9600 Pro instead of a 9700 Pro...

It performs like a 9700 pro in the other benchmarks though :?

 

[swaaye]

Maybe the 9800PRO isn't a 9800PRO?

 

[Richard]

Maybe the 9800PRO isn't a 9800PRO?

Similar to what dan2097 said, it performs like a 9800 Pro in at least the D3 benchmark.

 

[Pete]

Um, it's Anandtech. And it's Anand. I like the guy, but his video card reviews usually contain one egregious (and unremarked) error--par for the (well-written) course. After his 5900U + D3 preview, I've mellowed remarkably when it comes to his errors. His 9700P does seem really slow for Far Cry, whereas the 5900XT and 9800P seem correct in relation to each other (HW.fr and Xbit both show a 9800P is ~2x faster than a 5900XT). I'd think the 9700P would be much faster than a 5900XT, especially with AA.

 

[Diplo]

Ummm. I note the Anand review states:

By lowering the memory clock NVIDIA helps to offset the additional cost of the PCI Express-to-AGP bridge.

However, our very own 'Wavey' Dave Bauman states:

The decision to clock down the memory on the AGP version, in relation to the PCI Express 6600 GT board, is a little curious, although there may be a few potential explanations. What we may think as being an obvious one, cost, isn’t quite as obvious as it seems – the inclusion of an extra chip, the HSI bridge, will increase board costs so something may be cut back to offset that cost, however in the case of the memory the same 2ns modules are being used on both AGP and PCIe versions, so the physical memory costs will be the same for both models.

I know who I believe

 

[Sxotty]

Yet dave also said it could be cheaper to lay routing that would perform reliably at the lower speeds, and that is where the cost savings came in.

 

[Diplo]

Yet dave also said it could be cheaper to lay routing that would perform reliably at the lower speeds, and that is where the cost savings came in.

Yeah, I guess that's possible. However, he also specualted that the reason might simply be that Nvdia want to make PCIe look better than it is as they have invested so much in it and want people to migrate over. Also note that the XFX 6600GT which was reviewed by Anand clocked the same as the PCIe cards:

The XFX card is identical to NVIDIA's reference board except for one major factor - it is clocked at the PCI Express 6600GT speeds of 500/1000.

Makes you wonder what the real reason is...

 

[Pete]

The modules may be the same, but Samsung or whoever may just be delivering whatever they have that satisfies nV's agreement. It is curious, tho, and pushing PCIe seems the best explanation, IMO.