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So, with very little new on the features side, let’s move on to the benchmarks. Due to the slower clocked memory, I presumed that the 6600 GT AGP version would be significantly slower than the PCI Express card, and this almost held true. Now, it’s worth remembering that the two cards were tested using different drivers, so the numbers might differ to some degree due to this. The other aspect to take into consideration is that the AGP card was tested on a different platform, which in turn could affect the scores. Both of the cards where tested using the same 3.4GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPU and the same hard drive, as we tried to keep the test platforms as similar as possible.

Overall the PCI Express card came out on top and it also seemed to take less of a hit when FSAA and AF were enabled in most games, but the AGP card came out on top at 1,024 x 768 in Unreal tournament 2004 and it also managed to squeeze past in Halo, by a small margin. In all the other games it trailed behind its PCI Express cousin by between two and five frames per second, which is still very acceptable considering that the HSI would cause some delay when it translates the signal from PCI Express to AGP.

Overall the 6600 GT AGP is a decent enough graphics card for anyone looking at upgrading to Shader Model 3.0 on the cheap, without having to upgrade the rest of their PC. However, there is one major advantage that the PCI Express version has over this new AGP card, and that’s SLi. If you bite the bullet and go down the PCI Express route and swallow the cost of a new motherboard as well as a graphics card, you’ll have the option of fitting two GeForce 6600 GT cards and dramatically improving your gaming performance. Unfortunately SLi is not an option with AGP, so deciding to stick with the older architecture does have its limitations.

Just like PCI Express card, the GeForce 6600 GT AGP card will retail at around the £150 mark, making it a very affordable graphics upgrade considering that you get some pretty decent frame rates in just about every game we tested, as long as you don’t go mad with the anti-aliasing and filtering options. Despite the lack of SLi support, the GeForce 6600 GT AGP looks like a good bet for anyone looking to get a bit more power out of their AGP slot.

Verdict

The 6600 GT AGP might not impress in terms of new features, but it is fast enough for the mainstream gamer. If you want to improve your graphics performance without spending a fortune or upgrading your motherboard, the 6600 GT AGP will do nicely.

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