Product Analysis:

The interesting thing about Gigabyte’s 6600GT is that it offers two versions: a regular 6600GT with a standard heatsink and another version that comes with Gigabyte’s latest SilentPipe cooler, which is a unique concept from Gigabyte that features a completely fanless heatsink, thanks to its copper structure. When we are seeing more and more manufacturers factory overclocking the cards and retailing them at a slightly higher price, Gigabyte is perhaps one of the few manufacturers to have introduced a new type of heatsink with absolutely no factory overclocking done. Then again, when you think about it, maybe that’s a good thing. We first had experience with the company’s SilentPipe heatsink when we evaluated its 6800 vanilla offering and much to our disappointed, the heatsink was too hot to touch, although it cooled rather well. It’s possibly a good option for those who are looking for completely noiseless computing at possibly higher case temperatures, overall.

The heatsink on this particular card is relatively standard with a flamboyant appearance, thanks to the Gold exterior. The fan is situated on the left side of the heatsink with ventilation holes on the right side to better dissipate heat. As it’s a common practice with manufacturers of mid-end cards, the onboard memory modules are not covered with RAM coolers or something of that sort to further cool them. However, as you will later find out, they don’t have much impact on the overclocking performance, anyways.

The opposite side of the graphics adapter features a standard reference design model with nothing much to add. Unlike its AGP counterpart, the 6600GT does not feature an additional power connector. Thanks to the PCI Express, the card attains enough power in order to operate appropriately.

As is the standard with majority of the graphics adapters, Gigabyte’s 6600GT also has regular VGA, DVI and S-Video Out ports. Other than that, the card is based on Gigabyte’s usual blue PCB with generally a similar layout when compared to its competition.

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