Lake Bluff, IL-based BFG Technologies continues their mission of providing the hardware community with NVIDIA-based graphics card that cater to the enthusiast. The company's "OC" series of pre-overclocked graphics card are extremely popular and are backed by a full lifetime warranty. This article is a review of their mid-range GeForce 6600 GT OC AGP.
The Chipset
NVIDIA's GeForce 6 Series debuted in April of 2004 and arrived with a slew of new features designed to enhance the evolution of PC gaming. Improvements over the previous generation GeForce FX architecture include the following features:
CineFX 3.0 - features infinite length shader programs, dynamic program code flow control, object instancing using vertex frequency stream dividers, displacement mapping, and Multiple Render Target technology
Shader Model 3.0 - a new set of DirectX 9 technologies that allow developers to incorporate advanced pixel and
vertex shaders at 32-bit precision
Intellisample Antialiasing 3.0 - features a high-quality rotated-grid antialiasing that incurs less of a performance hit
Adaptive Texture Filtering - a series of optimized texture filtering algorithms including the ability to perform full trilinear filtering
High-Precision Dynamic Range Technology - enhances image quality through the use of floating point operations in shading, filtering, texturing, and blending
UltraShadow II - a patent-pending technology that significantly increases the performance of supported lighting and shadow calculations
Video Processing Engine - integrated hardware provides acceleration for DVD and video playback
The GeForce 6 Series has been well-received by the gaming community and has received numerous industry awards including the prestigious PC World Best Buy Award for both the performance and value categories.
The Card
Initial GeForce 6 offerings consisted of the 6800 models (6800, 6800 GT, 6800 Ultra, and 6800 Ultra Extreme), which ranged in price from $300 to $550 USD. While enthusiasts were buying the high-end graphics cards at a faster rate than they were being manufactured, lower than expected yields led to reduced profit margins. The lucrative market has always been in the mid-range and low-end where NVIDIA eventually filled the void with the 6600 and 6200 series.
As the industry began the transition to PCI-Express, NVIDIA hit a grand slam when they developed their high-speed interconnect (HSI), which features a bi-directional protocol conversion. While the GeForce 6600 GT was originally offered as a PCI-Express part, the HSI allowed NVIDIA to supply the AGP mid-range market with the latest in consumer graphics technology.
BFG Touches
Lifetime Warranty
Copper GPU and HSI Heatsinks
Factory Overclocked (525MHz/1050MHz vs. 500MHz/1000MHz)
Dual DVI Output
THE PACKAGE
BFG's packaging has remained consistent since the inception of their "OC" line of graphics cards.
Box Shots
The graphics card and accessories are housed in a protective plastic enclosure.
Box Shots
It was interesting to find the GeForce 6800 being mentioned on the back of the box I received in lieu of the GeForce 6600 GT. This could have been a typo that slipped through inspection.
Box Shots
Here is a snapshot of the entire package.
Contents
The contents consist of the graphics card itself, a driver and utility CD, a game demo CD (includes Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Silent Storm and Painkiller), a Quick Install Guide, NVIDIA's output dongle, two DVI to VGA adapters, a power splitter cable, two BFG stickers and a blue note explaining precisely what to do in the event the equipment should fail.
