Mid-Range PCI-Express shootout

Overclocking:

We overclocked all three video cards to give an indication as to how well these cards overclock past their specification. This is only an indication, as we cannot guarantee that video card manufacturers are not sending us “cherries”.

The BFGTech GeForce 6600GT OC was able to be clocked to 589/1180MHz from its default 525/1050MHz clocks. The clock speeds that we have attained here fall in line with what other reviewers have been able to gain from this video card.

The sample that was sent to us by Club3D reached perfectly stable clock speeds that are the same as the stock clocks for a Radeon X700 XT, but would not go a shade higher from 475/1050MHz without serious corruption and artifacting. The clocks may well be able to be increased if the heatsink was attached a little firmer.

HighTech’s excellent cooling solution really helped with overclocking the X700 Pro IceQ Turbo, which is already guaranteed to run at 460/960MHz out of the box. Our sample managed to reach speeds of 495/1110MHz, which is quite scintillating when you consider that the stock clocks for an X700 Pro are 425/864MHz.

Final Thoughts...

Without doubt, there have been three very attractive video cards on show here today, and it would be a shame to pick a winner from a very strong pack. However, such is life these days – things are so close between ATI and NVIDIA in terms of performance these days, so it comes down to the perception of value on these three cards. Before we establish where the best value lies, it is worth having a summary of our findings.

BFGTech’s GeForce 6600GT OC comes with possibly one of the best support infrastructures around, offering, and delivering a 24/7 technical support help line, along with a true lifetime warranty on every video card that they sell. This means you are eligible to receive support on your BFGTech video card well after it has ceased production. The bundle wasn’t the best, but at £145 you can’t really grumble at this. The cooler design is very efficient too, along with the excellent idea to add a shim to the NV43 core – it just makes things so much steadier, and it gives the consumer peace of mind that they are not going to crush or damage the core if they knock the heatsink unintentionally.

Its gaming performance is solid across the range of titles that we have tested here, and with the exception of the blip in Half-Life 2 it delivers comparable performance to both of the Radeon X700 Pro’s that we have evaluated here. There is a slight issue with the over exposed or blurred lighting in Need For Speed: Underground 2, but when you are travelling at close to 200MPH, you do not tend to notice the blurred lighting. It is also a strong overclocker.

Club3D’s Radeon X700 Pro is a very solid performer in all of the titles we have tested here, despite losing out to the other two cards in terms of overall speed. The bundle is nice, although I’m not too sure about the game that was included – I would much rather see a top-end title, or one that has been a previous best seller included in the box, as I don’t see the point in adding software for the sake of it. The heatsink design is a clever one, but the springs do require some extra tension to remove the chances of poor contact between the GPU and heatsink.

The array of cables included is very welcome, while the case badge and Club3D-branded DVI to VGA converter are a nice touch – it goes a long way to help with brand creation, especially with the gap in the market left by Creative and Hercules, previous big UK brand names. The potential to fill that gap is there, but there are a few minor tweaks required in order for them to effectively fill the spot as a very exclusive brand of video cards – the card does not come cheap, with expected retail prices set to be around £160. They also have to compete with HighTech, who are right up there in terms of exclusivity, in my opinion.

Speaking of which, HighTech’s bundle is quite scintillating for a mainstream video card, and they really haven’t cut many corners along the way to creating this fantastic bundle. Their continued hard work is going a long way towards establishing HighTech at the top of the tree when it comes to ATI-based video cards. It is priced fairly well at a shade over £163, but there is a chance that this price may drop if enough of these cards can find their way in to online retailers warehouses.

The cooling solution may not be to everyone’s taste, and it will be no use to anyone who is has a Small-Form-Factor system, such as a Shuttle XPC. That aside, the cooling solution is a very solid even with the annoying flickering LEDs.

The HighTech X700 Pro packed the best punch in Half-Life 2 when operating at its guaranteed Turbo speeds of 460/960MHz, while coming fairly close to BFGTech’s GeForce 6600GT OC in Doom 3. Need For Speed: Underground 2 was a slight disappointment due to poor Anti-Aliasing performance, unable to deliver a smooth frame rate at 1024x768 with 2xAA 4xAF. On the whole though, we enjoyed our experiences with the HighTech X700 Pro IceQ Turbo – it was as solid as the other two video cards evaluated here across the board, and did clock up rather amazingly.

Final, Final Thoughts...

It has been very hard to pick a clear winner, and there really are no losers in this review – if you were to go out and buy any one of these video cards tomorrow, you would not be displeased with what you receive. HighTech’s continued work has really shown in their X700 Pro IceQ Turbo, with it now offering that little bit extra performance thanks to iTurbo, enabling it to establish a performance margin over similar products from its competitors. Club3D are set to hit the UK market running, with a few minor niggles needing a little bit more attention, apart from that they look to have a very solid product in the making. Finally, it would be wrong not to mention BFGTech’s support infrastructure one more time, because it is simply fantastic. That and the fact that BFGTech supplies their GeForce 6600GT OC with factory overclocked frequencies enabling them to push the envelope ever harder.

We can’t avoid mentioning ATI’s recent release of the Radeon X800 vanilla, which is set for a price tag around £170-180 in the UK – it is ready to eat all three of these video cards for lunch. Having said that, they aren’t quite readily available in the quantities that you can find both the Radeon X700 Pro and GeForce 6600GT-based video cards right now, so we will hold our judgement on that video card for another day.

I would like to congratulate both HighTech and BFG Technologies for creating two quite brilliant products here, and it is not often that we give out an award for excellence, never mind two in the same review, but both video cards have more than impressed me.

- Tim Smalley