Club 3D fights with 6600GT

CLUB 3D IS definitely fighting its way to become one of the significant Nvidia partners, as this company is selling Nvidia, ATI, S3 and XGI products at the same time. This is the way they're meant to be sold, I would say so.

Nvidia doesn't recognises this, but ATI, S3 and XGI already have and certified this company as a partner. Maybe the green boys might actually start taking care of this plucky company too. At the end of the day it is making them money.

The card that we've reviewed has been shipping for quite some time and now you can buy this card for a very attractive €170 in most of the Europe. Club 3D is actually selling these cards in the UK as well.

Nvidia made a good business with Geforce 6600 GT cards clocked at 500MHz core and 1000MHZ GDDR 3 memory and definitely defeated ATI's X600 generation of cards. Mathematics and features won this game for Nvidia 6600 GT as this card actually has eight pipelines while ATI X600 cards have only four. ATI responded with X700 generation powered with eight pipelines but 6600 GT still competes well against this card. ATI now has X800 vanilla that is priced some €70 more than Geforce 6600GT, but that cannot be compared in the same league, still this ATI card ends up faster than 6600GT.

A very important detail is that card features Shader Model 3.0 support that might come handy in some games and definitely will serve you well in the future. All games will eventually go for Shader Model 3.0.

Club 3D's card is based on a reference design and so is standard like most of the Geforce 6600GT cards, and it's powered with 128MB of memory. You get a Club3D branded DVI dongle, composite cable, two CDs for driver and WinDVD Creator and a special cable that includes "out" connectors for composite, S-video, and HD TV cables. The CD content is well designed and features a lot of different Nvidia drivers from 43.45 to 66.xx generations, includes WDM drivers, overclocking tools and the manual. It's good for a start for installing the card but I always suggest checking nvidia.com or nzone.com for the latest Nvidia drivers.

We compared this card with Power Color's X700PRO card, priced at the same level and can be bought for just a few euros more than the €170 price tag.

We tested the cards in our new test bed equipped with:

Intel Pentium 560 3.6 GHz CPU
Abit AA8 I925 motherboard
Corsair DDR II XMS 2 PC 667 memory
Western Digital 160GB WD1600JD SATA drive
DVD+-RW NEC ND-3520A
Sea Sonic 430 W PSU
Cooler master socket T cooler

Results

DOOM 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	43.3	30.6	22.0
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	63.1	51.7	40.2
Far Cry 1.3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	67.51	52.75	32.29
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	52.71	51.95	43.50
Half Life 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	43.10	41.58	37.21
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	34.07	34.42	31.85
Counter-Strike Source	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	114.05	72.11	57.09
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	113.64	87.55	70.47
Unreal Tournament 2004	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	147.91	119.20	93.01
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	125.38	117.99	109.06
DOOM 3 FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	27.8	19.3	13.6
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	38.4	25.0	17.0
Half Life 2 FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	32.06	24.12	19.90
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	33.24	27.04	19.18
Counter-Str. S . FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	73.80	49.01	39.65
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	93.37	55.4	30.43
Composite Figures 3Dmark03	3Dmark03	Game 2	Game 3	Nature
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	7115	45.1	40.8	51.3
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	7989	58.5	50.8	47.5
Composite Figures 3Dmark03	Single Texturing	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel sharer 2.0
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	1210.6	2874.7	30.4	67.0
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	1624.9	3893.7	22.9	107.5
Composite Figures 3Dmark05	3Dmark05	Game 1	Game 2	Game 3
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	3041	13.9	8.7	14.9
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	3253	14.1	9.6	16.9
Composite Figures 3Dmark05	Single Texturing	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS /VS complex
Power Color Radeon X700PRO 425/432 MHz	1385.6	3390.3	60.8	35.1/38.5
Club 3D Geforce 6600 GT 500/1000 MHz	1865.1	3982.1	93.9	36.6/24.9

You can clearly see that Club 3D 6600GT card dominates in Doom 3 and we kind of expected that. At higher resolutions, it's almost twice as fast than the X700PRO. In Far Cry, the situation is kind of different as the X700 PRO with 256MB memory fights back. I noticed that Far Cry simply likes the cards with more memory. Half Life 2 is ATI's game so we are not surprised that this game actually ended up faster but counter strike Source is mysteriously faster than ATI X700 PRO card. Unreal tournament 2004 likes X700 PRO in 10x7, it's drawn on 12x10 while on 16x12 Club 3D is wining with Nvidia 6600GT engine.

When we tested with four times FSAA and eight times anisotropic filtering we notices Doom 3 still likes Club3D Nvidia based card while in Half Life 2 Club 3D 6600 GT actually is little bit faster than X700PRO on 10x7 and 12x10 and just a little bit slower on 16x12. In Counter Strike Source again surprisingly Geforce 6600 GT is faster on 10x7 and 12x10 while losing on 16x12 from Power color X700 PRO based offering.

In synthetic tests, Club 3D Geforce 6600GT is dominating 3Dmark03 completely and winning in every single test, apart from Vertex Shader one. In 3Dmark05 Club 3D Geforce 6600GT is still faster but not by far.

Conclusion
This card is definitely a champion when it comes to Doom 3 and it's actually faster than X700 PRO in most cases. Half Life 2 is the exception but that's ATI's game, so no surprises there. Games such as Far Cry that like 256MB might score better on X700PRO because of its 256MB of memory but in all other cases 6600GT makes things faster. If you are not an ATI fanatic and want to spend around €170 for a graphic card this should be a very good solution for you. Its fast it can work in SLI and it will play your games fast enough. Then again X700PRO with 256 MB memory will let you play every single game just few frames slower but it will be absolutely good enough for you. µ