One of
three different Albatron cards in this roundup, the PCI Express based, 128MB Albatron Trinity GeForce PC6600U is certainly the most
distinctive. It's the only 6600-based card we've seen to sport a heat-pipe based cooling solution. This card's heatsink
contains two heat pipes which link to the substantial rear heatsink/fan combo,
helping to cool the card effectively, with very little noise.
The
Albatron Trinity GeForce PC6600U is based on the Geforce 6600 GPU, but Albatron
has taken advantage of the extra cooling power of the heatsink to raise the core
and memory speeds considerably higher than stock. The unit we reviewed was
clocked at 400MHz core, a full 100MHz over normal Geforce 6600 speed; the 128MB
of memory had also been increased to 700MHz, 200MHz over stock. With these
speeds, the Trinity GeForce PC6600U card should occupy a nice middle ground
between the Geforce 6600 and 6600GT cards.
Interestingly, the Albatron Trinity GeForce PC6600U also
features an MIO connector for SLI operation. Of course, according to nVidia the
6600 GPU is not SLI compatible, only the Geforce 6600GT is, but since the two
are more or less identical... why not? Unfortunately we were not able to test
SLI operation with this card since we only had one review unit to work with. The
PC6600U was one of the more expensive cards in our roundup, it's heatpipe-based
cooling no doubt contributing to this.
The large
heatsink made this one of the heaviest cards in our test group. In operation, it
was effectively silent, as you'd hope from a heat-pipe based cooling solution,
even one with a fan. The heatsink does not make contact with the memory modules,
though it does cover and protect them. The front of the card features the
standard VGA, DVI and S-video/breakout cable connectors.
The
bundle is sparse, as Albatron's tend to be. A simple breakout box is
included which features component, S-Video and composite connectors. The
included software is comprised of WinDVD/WinDVD Creator, an old five game demo
CD and Arx Fatalis, a game that was released in 2002. No DVI to analog connector
was included, which we found disappointing, as will users who like to use more
than one analog monitor.
Overclocking: The Albatron Trinity GeForce PC6600U
attained a maximum overclocked speed of 514MHz core/743MHz memory. We were very
impressed with the core overclock. If this card is using a stock 6600 GPU, then
that's a big increase, achieving 6600GT levels. The memory overclock was not so
impressive. Overall though, we were pleased with the overclocking potential of
this videocard.
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