The AOpen 6600GT is targeted at the $199 price point. At this price, the intended competition is the X700 Pro. Unfortunately, ATI has released an X800 card that supposedly outperforms the card at the projected price point. From what I’ve heard, the X800 outperforms the 6600GT in nearly every situation. The 6600GT is a good card, don’t get me wrong, but at the price it is online and the retail price, the other card may be a better choice. AOpen has 24/7 RMA service on their website, a eForum to get help and a email contact system called DrOpen to provide top-notch technical support.

One nice thing about NVIDIA cards is their ability to SLI. With the recent announcement of ATI’s Crossfire technology, dual video cards providing increased performance will be an increasing market. My opinion on SLI is there are a lot of applications that can take advantage of the second card, but there are many more that do not. ATI’s Crossfire requires the use of a master card and an X800 card. It should be interesting.

NVIDIA will probably release a new video chipset this year, the “G70”. Pictures of this new card are already online at Anand’s and other websites. Every new chipset architecture they’ve launched in the last few years has also had a mid-range and a value part to complement it. So it is very likely that the 6600GT might be replaced by another card sometime in the future (6 months or so).

Performance - 7 Features - 10 Compatibility - 10 Price - 7 Availability - 10 Setup - 10 Overall Value - 6 Ease of Use - 8 Support - 10 Software - 9 Total- 87