Hi all
Is anyone who has a GeForce 6600  card having any problems running flightsim 2004. I am due to up grade to a new PC soon which will include a new card.
I have read in the nvidia forum that people are having problems running Flightsim 2004 on the 6600
I can't really afford the 6800 which, here in New Zealand is going for over $500, also would I be better off going for a GeForce 6600 GT 256MB PCI Express which I can get for $306.95


Cheers

Rhys

Hi hsv,

Make sure you buy a true 6600GT and not a plain 6600 or a 6600 by any other name because they are not the same.

Usually, a 128mb card is fine, but 256mb would be better of course, IF all things were equal.

The problem is, that some manufacturers add poor quality and slower ram chips to their products IN BULK (ie 256mb) to flog their products off because many people believe that RAM amount on a video card defines performance. RAM quantity doesn't define performance, but it's QUALITY does.

Any 128mb card with quality ram with beat an equivalent 256mb card with poor ram.

With a high quality and expensive card, you can be pretty sure that the 256mb version is fair dinkum and not a cheap imposter, on a 6600GT in particular, I would be surprised if a 256mb card would be produced with junk RAM, so you should be safe. You actually have to research the card in detail to try to obtain it's ram spec.

NVIDIA have a standard specification for RAM / GPU speeds for the 6600GT, and if the card meets or exceeds that spec, it's fine. The stock speeds are 500/500 for GPU/RAM on the 6600GT, (that's 1000mhz DDR for the RAM).

Some cards are offered with exceptional ram and these use higher ram speeds than stock, if the 256mb version you want is one of those, well, you have an absolute winner.

As for performance ....... well, I'm using an overclocked  nvidia 5900XT 128mb 8x AGP card at the moment, and it runs FS9 pretty darn good..........

This morning I bought a new card, a  Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH 128MB PCI-E video card at long last ($289 ozzie clams)....... it should be close to twice as fast as what I have now, so I'm not expecting any issues with FS9. I'll find out in the morning when it arrives by post!  

The HSF (heatsink fan) arrangement on the 6600 design is flawed, so it's up to individual manufacturers to provide their own solutions. The problem was the way that the heatsink is supported over the GPU, and this could cause serious cooling problems if the alignment was easily bumped out of position...... apparently it's easy to do this by simply installing the card.

I would imagine that many users would have heating problems with 6600gt's because of this, and probably aren't even aware of the cause.

Some manufacturers addressed this problem with varying degrees of success, and Leadtek is one which did it right by beefing up the support for the HSF.

And, here is the best advice..... (I saved it for last in case you got bored!) ....... MAKE SURE YOUR MAINBOARD SUPPORTS PCI EXPRESS video cards and has a dedicated 16x PCI-e slot onboard...... if you have an AGP slot for graphics instead, it won't work, even if you use a mallet to install it!  

*cough* ATi X800XL *cough*

To all the nay sayers I do see an improovment of PCI-E over AGP, and ontop of that the 256MB cards tend to offer higher frame rates (or so my resurch concludes).

Cheers
CTJoyce

Quote:


*Cough* 6800GT's overclock to 6800Ultra speeds *cough *

Quote:


Truth is, the XL is an inferior card to the 6800GT as are any of the the X800 series.  
The current gen ATI's lack shader model 3.0 support. There are SM3.0 supported games out now and plenty more to come (which current gen ATI's will not take full advantage of)


Another reason I say the 6800GT, www.overclockers.co.uk sell the 256MB 6800GT for £165 !!! - a staggeringly good price!