Gigabyte GV-N66256DP GeForce 6600 256MB TV-out/DVI/HDTV 8X AGP

[taltman]

Does anyone have this card? How do they like it? Will it fit in a shuttle small form factor pc? Please give me some feedback on it.

I want to upgrade from fx5200 to this card. Any feedback would be great!

/Tal

[jphhughes]

I just bought this card and I doubt it would fit in a Shuttle. Now having said that I don't have a shuttle so I can't say for sure. I have the fanless version and it has a pipe heatlsink on the chip. The heatsink covers the back and front of the board and the pipe extends above the top of the board which could interfere with the case cover depending on the amount of room above the PCI card cage. It entends about quater of an inch above the top of the card. Hope this helps.

[taltman]

Hi JP,

I have about an inch of clearence above my current agp card so i think the heat pipe going above isn't a problem.

Can you fit a pci card right behind the video card? Will the rear heatsink touch the other card?


I believe the shuttle box layout is like this

|-Outside Edge---AGP---PCI Slot---CPU/etc--Other Edge of system|

/Tal

[paulbeers]

I have the card in mention and love it. Silent with all the bells and whistles. Handles HDTV like a champ. With an Athlon 64 3000+ (old 754 pin version), I am getting around 35-40 percent cpu usage on 1080i. You can put a pci card next to it as per it is only a one slot card. I am not doing so as per I have it in a full atx case and do not need to have card next to it, but it certainly is thin enough to put a card "below" it. If you have an inch above then you should be fine (without meausuring I would guess the heat sink on top only sits up about another half inch). I bought mine from zipzoomfly for 121 about a month ago.

[jphhughes]

Paulbeers, perhaps you can offer an opinion on my situation wit this card. I have an older Hitachi RP TV that has component connection. However when I connect the adapter that comes with the board with a component cable to the TV the color and resolution is terrible. Since the TV is year 2000 vintage it does not state in the manual what resolutions are possible it just states it can display a 1000 lines. I tried the card at 800 by 600 and 1280 x768 but both still looked terrible. The picture seems to contain a great deal of blue color and you can actually see squares which look like pickles on the TV. If I us the s-vid out to my receiver the picture is good. Any ideas on this problem would be appreciated.

PS Taltman, Paulbeers is correct I have my 6600 installed on an mATX board right next to my Hauppauge 250.

[cummings66]

I have experienced the same problem feeding an InFocus SP4805 using the component connection from the 6600. I'm not sure why the problem is there and I could not fix it. Normally it's not an issue because I use the DVI hookup, but that port quit on my PJ and I thought I could use component, bzzt, wrong answer.

I'd like to know what's up as well.

[jphhughes]

I sent a request to pcalchemy where I purchased the board explaining the problem and received the following reply.

"Component output is much more dependent on the display settings (resolution,
refresh rate, etc.), it would be my guess that you need to go into the
Nvidia Control Panel and get your settings correct.

The reason S-Video will work out of the box, is that the output is pretty
standardized and not as (or not even) dependent on the resolution you have
your computer set to.

I do not know what the settings should be, if you cannot get it right IO
would suggest that you make a posting to the forums at htpcnews.com, I'm
sure someone there knows what to set things to.'

I can appreciate the lack of technical support and did not expect a definitive answer. I was hoping that others would jump in here and offer a possbile solution. I also agree with their response that it probab;y is some combination of resolution setting and refresh setting. I will take their suggest and post over at htpcnews.com and see if I get any feedback. However I do believe their are many people here that would be able to suggest possible solutions. The depth of knowledge here is awsome. Any takers Regards,

[paulbeers]

Sorry I haven't replied to your question until now. I am going to go thru a few of the things I can think of off the top of my head...

1. A quality cable? Now, I don't mean you have to go out buy a set of 50 buck Monster cables, buuuutttt I tried to get away once with component output with a set of "standard" Composite cables rather than actual component and those "standard" composite cables just aren't up to snuff. I am actually using composite cables but they are of the gold variety with heavy shielding and seem to work fine.

2. Are you sure the cable is hooked up right? Seems kind of obvious, except it had me fooled for about an hour! For some reason, the break out 'box' is setup differently than any tv I have ever used. Normally I would just plug the cables in top to bottom the exact same and no problems. Unfortunately the colors are different on that box and so after seeing a heavily red screen, I finally checked the cable (after trying everything in the drivers) and realised my problem! I felt soooo dumb.

3. Do you know what the native resolutions your tv handles? Do not worry about lines, but rather what your tv uses. E.G. My tv is native 1080i and does not handle 720. In the drivers, there is an option to setup the tv output and I just selected 1080i in the setup and bam zoom it worked (well after i figured out the cable mistake mentioned above). As long as you use a native resolution, it SHOULD work just right.

I will admint, I have a fairly new HDTV that does handle 1600 lines horizontally, and so I MAY have had better luck. I think I had it running with about an hour, including my cabling issue. Your Mileage May Vary though. I do agree with PCAlchemy's assessment on the S-video issue. That is a very "generic" t.v output with very limited options and so it should be a lot easier for you to use.

If you are still having problems, I could hook my computer upto my t.v when I get some time and go thru the process to get it to work again.

[jphhughes]

Paulbeers, thanks for the reply and offer. I did post over at htpcnews and did get some help. As it stands now it look like my TV Hitachi RPTV 2000 vintage is only capable of 4801.It was advertised as HD ready. I found the various resolutions setting in the device display for the TV in the Nvidia Drivers. Not having done this before I never noticed the setting below the TV signal types such as M/NTSC. Once I discovered these I tested each one and again the only one that worked was 480i. I tested this and the video did not look that great so I just reverted back to svideo which in my case seems to look better and sharper. I do have a monster component cable and the connections are color coded so I believe the connections are correct (Red, Blue, Green). So don’t bother messing with your system and I do appreciate the offer. Thanks

[paulbeers]

I just saw your post over at htpcnews after I had posted about your television. I think you are choosing the right method as far as using s-video. For SDTV it is a lot easier to use s-video and i have noticed that for anything of 1024 or smaller, you can't beat a good s-video connection. If you don't do much gaming and aren't planning to upgrade tv's any time soon, you may want to consider moving to a less powerful video card if you are only going to do SDTV. Less power usage, less heat, etc. You can then turn around and sell that card or put it in another rig around your house. Just my 2 cents worth. My FX5200 works great for SDTV and doesn't require a external power connection to supply power to my vid card!