Leadtek Duo PX6600GT TDH Extreme

The Bundle

The bundle comes with a 2-port VGA adapter that we mentioned on the previous page; a HDTV cable with composite and RGB sockets; two games - Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory; a user manual; a users guide and the driver CD. We spoke to a representative at Leadtek's German offices regarding the DVI-to-VGA converters and a PCI-Express power adapter that seem to be missing from the bundle and we're not sure of their whereabouts.

Update:
We received confirmation from Leadtek that the 6-pin power adapter was missing from the bundle. However, there are no DVI-to-VGA converters included in the bundle - we would hope that Leadtek will change their mind and include the converters as not everyone wants to waste a PCI slot with the additional blanking plate required in order to use analogue displays.

How We Tested:

Please be aware that the way we test our video cards is not a like-for-like comparison, and it is not meant to be. We decided to concentrate on finding the "Best Playable" settings - this means that we're finding the best possible gaming experience delivered on each different configuration. There are no time demos used in our evaluations - we're focusing on the real-world gaming experience, which is, ultimately what should determine your next graphics card's purchase.

Rather than focusing on reporting the minimum and average frame rates for every configuration, we have decided to move the focus to resolution and settings. Thus, we are displaying our "Best Playable" resolutions and settings in a table that should be easier to understand than our previous format. If you take the logic that the higher the resolution and in game details, the faster the video card, you will not go far wrong.

In situations where we find that two competing video cards run at the same settings, we will bring the frame rates in to the discussion of our game play experiences with each particular video card.

System Setup

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (operating at 2400MHz, 12x200 - 4000+); DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR (NVIDIA NForce4 SLI); 2 x 512MB OCZ PC5000 Platinum Series (operating in dual channel with 2.0-2-2-10 timings); Western Digital 200GB Caviar SATA 150 Hard disk drive; OCZ PowerStream 520W Power Supply; Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; NVIDIA NForce4 Standalone chipset drivers, version 6.53.

Video Cards:

• 1 x Leadtek WinFast Duo PX6600GT TDH Extreme - operating at its default clock speeds of 525/1120MHz using ForceWare 78.01 WHQL.
  
• 1 x Club 3D Radeon X800 XL 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 400/980MHz using Catalyst 5.7 WHQL with Catalyst Control Center.
  
• 1 x XFX GeForce 6800 GT - operating at clock speeds of 350/1000MHz using ForceWare 78.01 WHQL.

The video card drivers were left at their default settings with the exception of Vsync, which was disabled in all cases.

Note:
The procedure for testing this video card was drawn out because we had major issues with crackling sound when using the ForceWare 78.03 hot fix drivers on the Leadtek WinFast Duo PX6600GT TDH. Along with the sound issues, we experienced many frame rate irregularities in Half-Life 2 that were completely unpredictable. At different points in the testing, the frame rate would be 30 fps, 50 fps, and and a number of other random values when in fact the frame rate should have consistently been over 100 frames per second. Thus, we reverted our testing for this review back to ForceWare 78.01.

Please note that the shimmering problems with GeForce 7 are still present in this driver - it shouldn't matter too much as we're evaluating the performance of GeForce 6-series video cards here, but we don't recommend using the ForceWare 78.03 drivers if you are considering purchasing the Leadtek WinFast Duo PX6600GT TDH.