Gigabyte GV-3D1 (Dual nVIDIA 6600GT)

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We have been trying to fish out more information on how it is done but Gigabyte seems to quite secretive about this latest weapon of theirs. Anyway, what I could gather and if my guess is correct, they probably linked up the two GPUs through SLI within the card. This reduces the latency of communicating than to link up through the mainboard PCI-E slot. With this method, this would definitely reduce any possible lags. Based on our test results, we compared our results to the official results obtained by 2 x 6600GT tested under the same configuration. The results is similar if 66.93 driver is used. Of course with the newer driver, the dual GPU card performs a few percent faster faster than 2 x 6600GT in SLI mode.

As Gigabyte hasn't officially announce how they intend to sell this card, there are some rumours that they will bundle this card with their high end K8NXP-SLI mainboard. They also claimed that the price will be cheaper than buying two separate 6600GT cards. Will a pair of such cards work (4 GPUs) on the K8NXP-SLI ? That remains to be answered.

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After completing the tests, I did try to test the card on two other PCI-E boards, e.g. MSI ATi K8 and EPoX 5EPA+ but it just couldn't POST at all. With the EPoX 5EPA+, the DEBUG leds shows "FF" and it wouldn't continue. I suspect that the graphics card has some form of detection algorithm within the BIOS that detects which board it is used on. Well, that is again my guess and I find that is highly possible as NVIDIA will come knocking on Gigabyte's door as it might affect the sales of SLI boards if the card can be used on any PCI-E board.

In terms of overclocking, the card can be tuned using V-Tuner2 which comes bundled with the graphics card. We only managed to go stable with 3Dmark03 running at Core/Memory at 510/600. The score for 3Dmark03 is 14792 and 104.5 for Doom 3 when overclocked. In fact, I noticed that no matter how far you push the memory (since it is rated 1.6ns), the performance doesn't differ a lot. As for the core clock, screen tearing appears when it is overclocked beyond 530 or so and it will hang. Well I think the room for overclocking is quite limited as it is already at its peak.

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To begin, $550 is a lot of money to spend. If you’re already planning to purchase an SLI motherboard and a pair of GeForce 6600 GT cards, the Gigabyte package is right up your alley. If you divide it up, the motherboard – a highly recommended piece of equipment – costs about $200 and each GeForce 6600 GT is costing $175. However, you’ll be going into the deal knowing that the combination is generally slower than the nForce4 Ultra motherboard and GeForce 6800 GT card that you could pick up for roughly the same price.

The other slight caveat is that your multi-monitor support will be fairly constrained. As it is, SLI will always limit you to one display output. If you had two graphics cards, you could disable SLI and use up to four monitors. But because the 3D1 has two outputs, that’ll be your ceiling with the technology disabled.

There’s no worrying about SLI compatibility, obviously, and the thermal issues you might otherwise encounter by putting two graphics cards right next to each other are sidestepped by putting them both on one circuit board (remember, the bottom card in an SLI setup restricts airflow to the second card above, so the card up top will run hotter – Brandon). Representatives at Gigabyte claim that there aren’t any special power requirements to keep the card running; you’ll just need one six-pin PCI Express power connection and an adapter is provided if your power supply doesn’t offer it. Component output is included and there’s a respectable software bundle, too.