Albatron GeForce 6600 - 512

Manufacturer: Albatron
Supplied by: Albatron
Price: TBA

by Dean Barker (2/11/2006)

Introduction

The midrange VGA market is where all the action is.  The performance offered at the $150 price point is enough to keep most gamers happy just so long as they aren't addicted to maxed out settings at 1600 resolution.  The GeForce 6600 GT has been a favorite in this category for some time but could use a breath of fresh air for the series.  Albatron has released their Trinity 6600 - 512 card to expand their midrange offerings to the VGA market.  Several basic differences exist between it and other close relatives in the family.  The primary change is half a gig of onboard memory.  That's right, 512 MB of onboard memory on a midrange product!  To accomplish this, Albatron shifted from the very familiar DDR3 graphics memory to DDR2.  The core and memory speeds have also been dropped down from the GeForce 6600 GT.  The big question that remains is can a product with half a gig of memory and slower core/memory speeds best a card clocked higher with 1/4 of the memory?  How much difference will quadrupling the memory give and at what cost?  The 6600 GT retails for around $130 at present so Albatron is taking on a real challenge with development of another card in the 6600 line given the success and bang for the buck of their current offering.  Let's start off with the white paper and have a closer look at Albatron's newest card.  Special thanks go out to Albatron for making this review possible.

Specifications:

• Graphics Engine: GeForce 6600

• Interface: PCI-Express

• Engine Clock: 350 MHz

• Memory Clock: 500 MHz

• Memory Type/Size: 512MB DDR 2

• Memory Bus: 128 bit

• Vertex Units: 8

• Max Resolution: 2048 x 1536 @ 85 MHz

• VGA Output: Yes

• TV Tuner: No

• TV-out: Yes

• VIVO: No

• DVI: Yes

What you get

The Albatron 6600 - 512 is big on memory but little on extras.  While price and availability of the card is in question at present, the looks of the bundle suggest that Albatron is shooting at keeping the street price as low as possible.  Aside from the 6600 - 512 card, you get a driver disk, a multi language quick installation guide and a HDTV cable adapter.  The adapter as you can see has ports for S-Video, standard video, Y, Pb and Pr type connection for any potential HTPC builders.

  
 

NEXT

Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - The Card
Pg 3 - Test Setup / Battlefield 2
Pg 4 - NFS: Most Wanted / Half Life 2
Pg 5 - Quake 4 and Doom 3
Pg 6 - Overclocking
Pg 7 - Image Quality / Conclusion