If you look through our reviews section, you probably notice that we go through a lot of motherboards and video cards at Computer Mechanix. It definitely doesn't hurt matters that I'm a pretty big gamer. Most people don't realize it, but there's a big connection between the video game industry and the advancement of new computer hardware. In fact, if it weren't for the bigger, better, and more power-hungry games, it's quite possible that we wouldn't see such huge leaps and bounds in computer technology; a Pentium III 733 MHz system is still remarkably capable for word processing, spreadsheet maintenance, and Internet usage. The games are where it's at and because of this, we're upgrading again.

I decided recently to make the biggest of leaps -- I wanted to go with Nvidia's new SLI (Scalable Link Interface) video card technology. SLI enables your computer to use two separate 3D-accelerating video cards to produce a single image (theoretically doubling your 3D performance because you now have twice the video card power). To give you a realistic idea of how this plays out in the real world, below is Tom's Hardware Guide's 3DMark2005 table for the current PCI-express video cards that are out there right now.

The top three results are from SLI-enabled systems, the first being two GeForce 6800 Ultra cards, the second GeForce 6800 GT cards, and the third being the system we're building here: two GeForce 6600 GT cards. Why didn't we go with GeForce 6800 Ultras? More bang for the buck. The cheapest GeForce 6800 Ultra we could find was about $450 making the cost of the video cards alone ringing in around $900. Two GeForce 6600GTs cost about $460 (total) so for $10 more than a single GeForce 6800 Ultra, the SLI-6600GTs produce 1133 more 3DMarks (a 121% performance bump for $10).

Also, if you take a close look at the charts, the two GeForce 6600GTs outperform ANY single card including ATI's granddaddy, the Radeon X850 XT PE which rings the bell at about $500 for just the single card. Yes, SLI is definitely a tempting route. Also, take note, a typical single GeForce 6600GT produces 3681 3DMarks on its own making it quite a bit better than standard GeForce 6800 256 cards; in other words, whether you're looking at single or SLI performance, you can't really go wrong with a GeForce 6600GT for the money.

SLI has a number of limitations, however. First, SLI only supports PCI-Express video cards (the new standard that is replacing the AGP standard that we've had since about 1996) thus requiring me to get a new motherboard. Second, because I'll be running two video cards instead of one, I need to also get a bigger power supply. Third, SLI currently doesn't allow multiple monitors (for more screen real estate) without rebooting every time I want to change from multiple monitors to playing a video game. Blech. Fourth, SLI requires two of the EXACT same card, preferably two that are built immediately after each other. Nvidia's SLI isn't AS picky as the days of Voodoo 2 cards, but it's still good to error on the side of caution.

After reviewing all of the GeForce 6600GT entries, we ended up picking Gigabyte's GV-NX66T128VP GeForce 6600GT Turbo Force Edition as our contender. There are a lot of cheaper 6600GTs on the market, but the Gigabyte packs two extremely tempting features into this card -- first, the card's memory is overclocked at the factory so the cards run a bit faster. Second, NO FANS!!!! Gigabyte uses new "heat-pipe" technology and heatsinks to make it so there are absolutely no fans on the card. If you're anything like me, you're tired of the jet-engine that's sitting next to your monitor on your desk, so no fans at all on the video card(s) is a god-send to quiet computing.

The Gigabyte card comes with everything you expect to see in a PCI-express offering: HDTV-out, DVI-out, Analog-out, a DVI-to-analog converter, drivers, a DVD-playing software program (Power DVD), and two games: Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising and Thief: Deadly Shadows.

We found the cards to be perfectly easy to install. In fact, installing them in our new DFI LanParty boards was a downright cinch as it turns out that the Gigabyte 6600GT cards don't require power from the power supply (GeForce 6800s and up require you to plug in a molex-cable from your power supply to provide the extra oomph that the cards need). No longer requiring a power cables makes these cards a breeze to install -- just like the video cards from pre-6800 days. Ah, the memories.

After running our 3DMark tests, we received the following scores for our SLI system (our test system is an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ on a DFI LanParty UT motherboard with 1GB of matched-pair memory running a Western Digital Raptor 74GB hard drive):

GeForce 6600GT SLI

3DMark2001: 21,652
3DMark2003: 14,610
3DMark2005: 6,502 (non-SLI mode: 3,583)

Albatron 6800 (for comparison)

3DMark2001: 18,967
3DMark2003: 8,893
3DMark2005: 3,058

Our scores fall pretty close to Tom's Hardware's 6600GT-SLI system and we attribute the extra 37 points to the mild overclocking Gigabyte did to these cards. Considering our Albatron 6800 from last year only pulled 3,058 on the 3DMark2005 tests, we'd have to say that SLI is a rounding success from a benchmark standpoint. In fact, even if you look at running the 6600GT as a single card (non-SLI mode), the $230 PCI-express card outperforms the $294.99 Albatron 6800 AGP (3,583 for the 6600GT to 3,058 for the 6800) making the 6600GT an excellent choice even if you're not intending to buy two of these monsters.

When playing games, the SLI system showed huge improvements over any single-video solution that we've tried up until this point. Battlefield 2, Guild Wars, Doom 3, and Half-Life 2 run with their settings turned almost all the way up in full 1600x1200 resolution: it is truly a beautiful thing to see. We did experience a few difficulties along the way.

We've discovered over the last year that video cards are a lot more particular than they used to be back before the GeForce 6000 series was released. Back in the "old days," video games would simply run choppy if you turned the settings up higher than the card could produce as the computer would try to produce the high-end graphics you were demanding but do it at a slower frames-per-second (FPS) rating. Now, games crash when the settings are too high. Perhaps this is a result of some quirky setting we missed in the video cards, but after lengthy testing, I believe this is simply the way things are: if you make them mad, the video cards will just give up on you.

Outside of the crashing issue (which seems to be universal over all 6000+-series cards), the Gigabytes are very, very nice cards. Temperature-wise, they run at 68-75 degress Celsius which is not bad at all, and, in our experience, do not seem to exceed that temperature threshold even when running a full-on DirectX 9.0c game like Battlefield 2 that will test the boundaries of even the fastest machine out there.

We absolutely adore our new Gigabyte 6600GT Turbo Editions and recommend them to anyone who has the capability (or want) to have an excellent PCI-express solution whether it's a single card or SLI.

Updated Material Below (9/15/2005):

It's been over two months since we threw these Gigabyte cards into our computers and I have an amendment to make to my initial review -- these cards are HOT. Blazingly-fast frames-per-second are obvious from the above scores, but I'm referring to the amazing internal temperatures of these cards.

In a single-card setup, the Gigabyte card is pretty darn warm with idle temps around 70 Celsisus and at-threshold temps breaking into the 90s. Put two of these together in a single system (such as my SLI setup) and you're looking at temperatures that verge on NUCLEAR. At idle, both of my cards bounced around the 70-degree mark (by comparison, most single-card setups with fans will hit 70 under full-load and float somewhere in the 50s at idle). Under full-load with a game such as Sierra's new FEAR demo, my cards broke 115 degrees Celsisus! Ladies and gentlemen, I can officially boil noodles on my SLI cards!

Now, what's wrong with hot temperatures? Electronic components do have a great deal of resilience enabling them to run at high temperatures, however stability and reliability are characteristics that are sacrificed under great heat; the cards caused my computer to crash frequently mid-game and most likely would have suffered extremely short life-spans at such intense heat.

In order to counterbalance this, I purchased a Zalman FB123 Bracket & 92mm fan and pointed the bugger directly at my video cards. Although this bracket & fan combination significantly lowered my temperatures (57C idle and 72C at full-load), the beautiful silence that had been created by the heat-pipe cooling of these Gigabyte 6600GTs has gone the way of the 486... my computer is loud again.

Until video card companies can figure out a way to use heat-piping in video card scenarios where the temperature is actually reasonable, I can't recommend the use of Gigabyte's GVNX66T128VP in multi-card SLI setups. If you only need one video card and don't plan to push it to its limits, I believe you should be alright. In multi-card setups, two 6600GTs with standard fan cooling may be quieter, believe it or not.

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