Leadtek Duo PX6600GT TDH Extreme

[Eguy]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/09/09/leadtek_duo_px6600gt/1.html

Hot damn!

It has 2 integrated 6600GT's

In the past, we've written quite a bit about the way that SLI works out for gamers. Over time, there have been improvements in the driver and it is now very easy to add your own custom profile for a particular game if there isn't already a profile created by NVIDIA. The list of SLI-optimised games is also growing, as NVIDIA's developer relations team are working closely with game developers to create SLI profiles that will be ready when the game is launched.

Up until now, we've only looked at SLI with two separate cards connected with an interconnect between the two cards. The lower end of the architecture also introduced bridge-less SLI with no requirement for a connection between the cards on the now entry-level GeForce 6600 LE and GeForce 6600.

this should be interesting

The card has a multitude of output options with support for up to three displays when SLI is disabled. The included analogue VGA header is attached to the card using the headers located near the HDTV port. Along with the HDTV port, there are also two DVI ports on the back plate, as we're beginning to see on all of NVIDIA's PCI-Express based video cards.

3 displays????

You can also see the 256MB of memory located on the card. Strictly speaking, it is two 128MB frame buffers with two 128-bit memory interfaces (one per GPU). It's much easier to consider this card as two separate cards that are simply sharing the same PCB. The video card requires additional power because there's not enough current available for two GeForce 6600 GT's through a single PCI-Express x16 interconnect. However, this seems to have been overlooked as there's no 6-pin PCI-Express power adapter included in the bundle (as you'll see over the page)

no power adapter?? hopefully they will include one

The bundle comes with a 2-port VGA adapter that we mentioned on the previous page; a HDTV cable with composite and RGB sockets; two games - Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory; a user manual; a users guide and the driver CD. We spoke to a representative at Leadtek's German offices regarding the DVI-to-VGA converters and a PCI-Express power adapter that seem to be missing from the bundle and we're not sure of their whereabouts.

lots of stuffs

System Setup AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (operating at 2400MHz, 12x200 - 4000+); DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR (NVIDIA NForce4 SLI); 2 x 512MB OCZ PC5000 Platinum Series (operating in dual channel with 2.0-2-2-10 timings); Western Digital 200GB Caviar SATA 150 Hard disk drive; OCZ PowerStream 520W Power Supply; Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; NVIDIA NForce4 Standalone chipset drivers, version 6.53.

Video Cards:

1 x Leadtek WinFast Duo PX6600GT TDH Extreme - operating at its default clock speeds of 525/1120MHz using ForceWare 78.01 WHQL.

1 x Club 3D Radeon X800 XL 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 400/980MHz using Catalyst 5.7 WHQL with Catalyst Control Center.

1 x XFX GeForce 6800 GT - operating at clock speeds of 350/1000MHz using ForceWare 78.01 WHQL.

did you see the stock speed???????????

looks quite nice but does not perform as well as others

BF2:

In this title, we found that the Leadtek Duo PX6600GT Extreme was not able to play the game with any of the details set to high at 1280x960, with the exception of the Texture Filtering option that controls Anisotropic Filtering. It was generally slower than both the GeForce 6800 GT and the Radeon X800 XL 256MB as we believe that Battlefield 2 is quite sensitive to frame buffer and available memory bandwidth. The Radeon X800 XL is faster than the Leadtek Duo - we were able to add detail to terrain and texture quality by increasing them to 'high'. With the GeForce 6800 GT, we were able to add 2xAA on top of the higher details. As such, we found that the GeForce 6800 GT delivered the best gaming experience in this title.

hmmm... drivers??

In some cases, we found that Leadtek's Duo PX6600GT TDH Extreme was faster than both the GeForce 6800 GT and Radeon X800 XL. We found that both Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry delivered a much better gaming experience than either of what we'd consider to be its single card competitors. However, there weren't any other games that we've tested that showed a definite advantage for purchasing a GeForce 6600 GT SLI over either GeForce 6800 GT or Radeon X800 XL. Battlefield 2 performed best on NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 GT, as we were able to apply 2xAA at 1280x960 with a medium-high in game detail setting. We found that Far Cry was not a huge advantage to Leadtek's Duo PX6600GT TDH Extreme, as we were able to play the game at the same settings with all three video card configurations tested. Both Need For Speed: Underground 2 and Half-Life 2 were a close competition between the Radeon X800 XL and the GeForce 6800 GT. If those two games are your preference, we'd probably say that the Radeon X800 XL has the slight edge here. In Half-Life 2, we had to reduce both the resolution and the Anisotropic Filtering samples on Leadtek's dual GeForce 6600 GT card in order to attain a smooth frame rate. Our final game test, F.E.A.R., shows that the GeForce 6800 GT is a strong performer and was clearly faster than both the Leadtek Duo PX6600GT TDH Extreme and the Radeon X800 XL. The Leadtek card was found to be the slowest of the group.

In short, Leadtek's Duo PX6600GT TDH Extreme is a good product - but at its pricepoint and form factor, the market that it will cater for is a very small niche of customers that have been wowed by SLI technology and the idea of two GPU's on the same PCB.

it is a nice idea, but not to much of a performance gain...

Eguy

 

[enVias]

Took Leadtek awhile, Gigabyte did it ages ago.

 

[NickS]

Took Leadtek awhile, Gigabyte did it ages ago.

I was thinkin the same thing. Maybe cuz Giga-Byte is pwn?

Overall, nice article Eguy, glad to see Giga-Byte has some competition now, with teh Dual Core Video Card segment.

 

[FragTek]

That would be dual GPU, not dual core Dual core refers to two cores on the same wafer

 

[NickS]

Soz, my bad .

 

[enVias]

That would be dual GPU, not dual core Dual core refers to two cores on the same wafer

Oops, didn't read it right.