Labs

It's no secret that the manufacture of graphics cards isn't as precise as ATi or Nvidia would like, and many GPUs from a silicon wafer have flaws in a pipeline or two. Rather than bin them, the affected quad of pipelines is turned off and the cards are released as lesser variants such as GTO or, in this

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case, LE.

This makes this Albatron essentially a GeForce 6600 with four pipelines rather than the usual eight, although with a slightly faster 325MHz core clock. The plain 6600 isn't exactly a performer, so the LE is predictably slow; in fact, it's the slowest card in the whole group at our 1,024 x 768 test settings. With 13fps in both Call of Duty 2 and Far Cry, this card simply can't cope with recent games at 1,024 x 768.

Even Albatron's bundle is uninspired: there are no applications or games and only a TV-out-to-composite adapter in the box. The card sports a single-link DVI interface plus D-SUB and S-Video if you buy a cable separately.

The 6600 LE may cost only £47, but it offers very little for that money. You can buy MSI's plain 6600 for just £9 more, or look to the X1300 from Connect3D for just £45, both of which offer a bit more power and a few utilities.