ASUS V6600 SDRAM SDR GeForce

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As with the majority of the GeForce based cards that are coming into the AnandTech lab, the ASUS V6600 SDRAM is based upon NVIDIA's reference design. By using this design, ASUS was guaranteed to have a functional card off the bat and, in theory, prevented the need for future board revisions. By using NVIDIA's reference design, ASUS could also essentially skip the costly and time consuming development and testing phase, as they were guaranteed a fully functional and efficient card upon manufacture. However, rest assured that ASUS put the card through a battery of tests, as this is the tradition at ASUS.

Naturally, with such high levels of quality control, the V6600 SDRAM is a very solid card. The GeForce processor itself is cooled with a low profile heat sink that is attached to the processor via a very thoroughly applied layer of thermal grease. It is exactly the type of cooling setup that we wish more manufacturers could achieve. The card, as tested, was outfitted with 32 MB of EliteMT 5.5 ns (183 MHz) SDRAM, accomplished by strategically placing sixteen 2MB SDRAM chips around the front and back of the board. While many of the GeForce based cards are now using 5 ns RAM, the 5.5 ns EliteMT RAM has been a common RAM choice for venders since the release of the TNT2 Ultra, however 5 ns SDRAM chips would have resulted in even more overclocking potential.

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The ASUS V6600 SDRAM is not available with TV out features, but rather the ASUS V6600 Deluxe offers these features. In addition, the V6600 Deluxe offers more advanced features, such as SGRAM, higher stock clock speeds, video capture, and 3D glasses. There is also another model of the V6600 which is named V6600 Pure. This is the same as the SDRAM version reviewed here, except that it uses 5.0 ns SGRAM as the RAM choice, uses ASUS's own reference design, and includes hardware monitoring capabilities. This card will provide a definite speed boost, as the 5.0 ns SGRAM allows for additional overclocked memory speed.

The 2D image quality of the V6600 SDRAM is above average, as the V6600 SDRAM provides clear and crisp text and images at resolutions as high as 1600x1200. This is a definite plus for those of us out there with larger monitors, as sometimes output can be fuzzy at these higher resolutions.