Labs

It's amazing to think it was just 18 months ago that Nvidia launched the 6600 series as a mainstream alternative to the high-end 6800 cards. In that short time, the 6800 has slipped comfortably into the mid-range, and the 6600 finds itself firmly ensconced in the entry-level category for both price and power.

It has a core clock

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speed of 300MHz, 275MHz memory and eight pixel pipelines. Frame rates at 1,024 x 768 weren't playable in our tests: Far Cry saw an average of 20fps, compared to 18fps in Call of Duty 2. Lower texture quality and detail settings are required to breach 30fps, but games start to look quite uninviting at that point.

Elsewhere, there aren't many features to recommend. There's no SLI bridge connector, but MSI does include a component output adapter to add to the display possibilities. There's a single-link DVI interface and one D-SUB port, and MSI includes a mediocre suite of utilities.

The 6600 is an interesting proposition, as it's slightly more powerful than the 7300s without costing as much as the faster X1300 Pro, occupying the middle ground. But we can't seriously recommend it as a gaming card over ATi's low-end offerings, and there are other Nvidia cards that are more suitable for compact low-powered PCs.