First Impressions - MSI 6600GT AGP

My MSI 6600GT AGP came yesterday morning.

My impressions after one day of running MS Train Simulator and Trainz:

It is like a little swiss watch to hold in your hand and marvel at. It
weighs a ton thanks to the copper heat sink. You must be careful not to put
any pressure on the heat sink as there have been reports of separating it
from the gpu. My guess is that's why there's a big brace on the back (could
be a new feature) and the sink is resting on the memory through pads. Not
sure if they are thermal pads -- can they be real thick?

Anyhow, uninstalled nvidia drivers and took out my ti4200 and put her in and
installed the drivers from the CD (msi enhanced nvidia 71.22, and wdm
capture drivers - it's VIVO). and ran the above sims.

Amazingly, with my mobile XP at 2150, frame rates didn't increase. I guess
these sims need an A64 - they can barely feed the video card when there's
lots of detail. Especially, trees and buildings.

But, I had only been able to run 2x anistropic on the ti4200. Now I'm
running 8x anistropic and 4x antialising. This made things look much better.
Especially, when looking at the rail cars from an angle -- they don't fuzz
up.

Then -- revalation -- I found the sharpness control!

I had asked nvidia for one, I think. Or had I asked Gainward?

Anyhow, running with it at the 2nd notch is a whole 'nother world. Tiny
print on the speedometers is clear (at 1024) and I think I can reach out
through the air and touch anything I could get to. It is so totally real --
especially superdetailed engines. Of course textures still look like some
kind of artwork, but it's crisp. Half real and half travelling through great
rail artists' work.

I did get a couple of aberrations in Trainz and MSTS, but only in 2D menus.
Not sure why -- maybe the antialiasing. Couldn't run full AA in MSTS.

One custom railroad that crashed MSTS when set to full detail before now
doesn't crash.

There's much more to discover. So much software came with it. The driver CD
had all the latest stuff - no need to download. The nvidia driver has a
couple of msi tabs including overclocking. There's no temperature readout in
the drivers, though. It might be in a utility, but maybe not.

Anyhow, there are lots of utilities and multimedia apps. I do have an msi tv
card that's not installed, and there's an msi app by intervideo to do time
shifting with it, and of course with the video in on the 6600GT. There's
actually a copy of show shifter in there too, maybe it will work with the tv
card. The app that came with the tv card doesn't do time shifting reliably.

There are lots of free games included, but I think they're all violent.

Benchmarks with 1gig pc 2700, mobile xp 2200+ 166x13 = 2150. (Keeping it
cool and quiet.)
6600GT not overclocked, 500/900
Aquamark 40,xxx
3dmark 03 - 7164
3dmark 01 -13,461

The difference in the benchmarks from the ti4200 was massive. They ran so
smoothly, though their very most challenging parts could bring the framerate
down to minimum acceptable briefly.

The VIVO video in on my Gainward ti4200 had some problems around the edges.
Gainward offered to replace it, but I never did. I haven't tried this one
yet; it has both s-video and composite in.

I won't be using the tv out but it appears to have s-vide, composite, and
HDTV.

One not so great thing -- in overlay you can't adjust gamma or sharpness. I
really thought the gamma would be adjustable. But anyhow.

Oh, and the fan isn't loud but if you get close to it the bearing sounds
grungy. I have thin acoustic foam in my case and it's on the floor under the
desk top with rug on the back wall, so I don't think I'll ever hear it. It
was the quietest 6600GT in one comparison review. But it is possible to put
a Zalman fan-sink on it, they say. Not sure how that works out for the
memory. I think there was a thread on that.
--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.