Test System Specifications
The BFG 6600 GT OC PCI-E Video Card was tested on my test system with the following specs:
- CPU: AMD FX-60
- Hard Drive: Samsung 250GB
- RAM:OCZ PC4000 DDR Gold Edition GX XTC 3-4-3-8, 2GB (2x 1 GB)
- PSU: PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 1KW
- Mainboard: ECS Elitegroup KA1 MVP Extreme
- OS: Windows XP Pro SP2
Features & Specs of the BFG 6600 GT OC PCI-E Video Card
- PCI Express™
- Memory 128MB GDDR3
- Core Clock 525MHz (vs. 500MHz standard)
- Memory Clock 1050MHz (vs. 1000MHz standard)
- RAMDAC Dual 400MHz
- Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 and lower, OpenGL 1.5 and lower for Microsoft® Windows®
- Connectors Dual DVI-I, HDTV S-Video Out
- 393 million vertices/sec setup
- 16.8GB/second memory bandwidth
- NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU ready
- Superscalar GPU architecture
- NVIDIA CineFX 3.0 engine
- High Speed GDDR3 memory interface
- Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 support
- Included in Box
- BFG GeForce™ 6600 GT OC graphics card
- Quick install manual
- DVI-I to VGA dongle
- HDTV / Video-Out Cable
- Driver CD, which includes:
- NVIDIA® ForceWare™ unified graphics drivers
- NVIDIA® demos
- Full installation manual .pdf
- NVIDIA® NVDVD™ 2.0 multimedia software
- Windowblinds™ BFG/NVIDIA® skins
BFG 6600 GT OC PCI-E Video Card Bench Marks
Since the BFG 6600 GT is considered to be a low budget gamers card, I ran several gaming benchmarks on it. The first test series I ran on the 6600 GT OC was 3DMark06. The results from the test series was as follows:
- Overall Score: 1455
- SM 2.0 score: 493
- HDR/SM 3.0: 542
- CPU: 1952
- Return to Proxycon: 3.689 FPS
- Firefly Forest: 4.532 FPS
- Canyon Flight: 4.882 FPS
- Deep Freeze: 6.357 FPS
While the 3DMARK06 scores are not that high, you have to keep in mind the budget price tag of this card. For reference, the overall 3DMARK06 score of the new 7600 GT XXX from XFX was 3557. When you look at it that way, the 7600 GT more than doubles the performance of the 6600 GT and does it for only about $50 more.
F.E.A.R. was the next benchmark up for the 6600 GT OC. I let the game choose the optimal settings:
- Effects:
- Detail: Max
- Model Decals: Max
- Water Resolution: Med
- Volumetric Lights: On
- Volumetric Light Density: Med
- Graphics:
- FSAA: Off
- Light Detail: Max
- Shadows: On
- Shadow Detail: Max
- Soft Shadows: Off
- Texture Filter: Anisotropic 4x
- Texture Resolution: Med
- Videos: Med
- Pixel Doubling: Off
- DX8 Shaders: Off
- Shaders: Max
With the above autodetected settings, the BFG 6600 GT OC performed very well. The minimum frame rate was 30 FPS, the average frame rate was 49 FPS and the maximum frame rate was 114 FPS. Those scores mean that 0% of the time was the frame rate below 25 FPS, 43% of the time frame rates were between 25 and 40 FPS and 57% of the time the frame rates were above 40 FPS.
To see how well the 6600 GT OC faired at higher settings I turned the FSAA to 4x, texture filtering to 16x, moved the resolution to 1280 x 960 and turned soft shadows on. At the end of the tests, the 6600 GT did not perform well with F.E.A.R. maxed out, nor did I really expect it to. The minimum frame rate was 7 FPS, average frame rate was 17 FPS and the maximum frame rate was 41 FPS. However, a whopping 83% of the time the frame rate was below 25 FPS, 16% of the time the frame rate was 24 too 40 FPS and only 1% of the time was the frame rate above 40 FPS.
The next game I used to bench the 6600 GT OC from BFG was Quake 4. I used the Quake 4 demo from Guru3D for these tests at the following settings:
- Resolution: 1024 x 768
- AF: None
- AA: None
- Quality: Medium
At the settings above the 6600 GT OC was able to put out some decent numbers and averaged 99.6 FPS. Changing AA to 16x, AF to 16x and quality to ultra with a resolution of 1280 x 1024, the 6600 GT OC averaged a playable 47.8 FPS.
Overall, the BFG 6600 GT OC can put down some decent numbers when it comes to gaming. The S-Video output also makes it a viable option for a media PC. However, with the recent release of the 7600 GT from Nvidia, purchasing one of these 6600 GT cards becomes a less viable option considering that the 7600 GT can be had for about $50 more than the 6600GT. If you can fine a 6600 GT OC on sale for a good price it is worth considering, otherwise save a bit more cash and go with the excellent 7600 GT.
