MSI NX6600GT AGP Installation & Review

[Cogar]

We have recently had a large number of questions regarding the installation of NVIDIA video cards in computers that had been using ATI video cards and vice versa. I thought it may be helpful to compose a relatively non-technical post to help people avoid these problems by describing a successful video card upgrade. I will also add in a review for the MSI 6600GT card with which I was quite impressed.

Installation

This is the installation procedure I used to change from an ATI Radeon 9500 to an NVIDIA 6600GT in a machine running Windows XP Pro. Note: depending on your particular card, some of the names may change.

Step 1. Remove all ATI drivers using the Add/Remove programs. (The path in Windows XP is Start --> Control Panel --> Add or Remove Programs.) Remove the ATI control panel first. Remove the ATI drivers second. Remove the ATI uninstall utility last. You may be prompted to restart your computer. Choose no. We will not be doing any restarting.

Step 2. Go to video properties and remove those drivers. Right click your mouse on the desktop and select "Properties." In the Display Properties window, choose the Settings tab and click on the Advanced button. In the Plug and Play window, click on the Adapter tab and select "Properties." You will arrive at a window named after your video card. Click on the driver tab. Click on the "Uninstall" button. Select all the drivers and uninstall them. Again, you may be prompted to restart your computer. Choose no.

Step 3. Close all the windows. Turn off your computer.

Step 4. Remove the "old" video card and replace it with the "new" one.

Step 5. Start your computer. It will probably start in a lower quality mode--perhaps 640 x 480 resolution and perhaps 256 colors. This is normal. You do not yet have any installed drivers for your new card.

Step 6. After Windows XP starts up, it will notice the new hardware and pop up a wizard window. It will ask you if you want Windows to search for new drivers. This is OK. Put the driver CD in your CD or DVD drive and make sure the box is checked on the wizard that will search this drive. The driver should install without incident. You may be asked to restart your computer.

Step 7. After restarting your computer, adjust your settings. You will have a little NVIDIA icon in your system tray. Right click on this icon to bring up your options. Adjust them to the preferred settings.

===============


Driver update. (Optional)

The following describes how to change drivers, should you find a problem with the ones you have. In this example, I changed from 71.22 to 66.93.

1. Download the drivers from the Nvidia site.
2. Disable your antivirus. Typically, this can interfere with driver installation.
3. Double click on the .exe file, which in this case is named "66.93_win2kxp_english.exe" and you will get a warning screen, telling you that the drivers are older and asking you to confirm that you want to install them. Click "Yes."
4. The installation utility will run and tell you that it will remove the old drivers and restart your computer. This is normal. Let it remove the drivers and restart your computer.
5. When your computer restarts, it will probably be running at 800 x 600. This is normal.
6. When you get to the windows desktop, you will probably have two applications running. One is a Windows installation wizard and the other is the Nvidia installation utility. Bring the Nvidia utility to the top.
7. The Nvidia utility will inform you that it detected a Microsoft installation wizard. Click "Yes" to minimize the Nvidia utility.
8. Click "Cancel" on the XP installation wizard.
9. The Nvidia utility should become active again and tell you it is ready to install the drivers. Click "Next." Continue to follow the Nvidia prompts. It will probably restart your computer at least once more. Some of this process takes a while. Be patient while your computer processes the files.
10. When Windows restarts with the drivers fully loaded, adjust the various video options to your preferred settings.

[Cogar]

Review

Although it was not my first choice, over time, MSI's 6600 GT caught my eye. It has a large, solid copper heatsink and fan over the GPU and a large solid copper heatsink on the High Speed Interconnect (HSI) bridge chip (the chip that converts the native PCIe card to AGP). When I first received the box, I was quite surprised at its weight. It weighed more than the last power supply box I had received. Part of the reason, of course, is the heavy copper heatsink. The package also contained two small books, a Quick Installation Guide, and a Quick User's guide. I guess everything about this card is meant to be quick.

What really surprised me was the collection of CDs included in the package--15 of them. They included the following:

1. MSI Multimedia Beyond 3D. This includes the drivers and a number of other graphic related programs.
2. MSI 3D Desktop.
3. MSI Media Center Deluxe II
4. "Photoshop Album SE" and "3D-Album"
5. "InterVideo WinDVD 5.1 channel" and "Supreme Foreign Language Learning Machine"
6. "RestoreIT! Professional" and "VirtualDrive Professional"
7. URU. Apparently this is a game.
8. XIII (4 CDs). Another game.
9. WinDVD Creator Plus
10. Prince of Persia The Sands of Time (2 CDs). Another game.
11. MSI Games Collection.

Although I admit that none of them are top titles, getting a software package like this with a video card that is priced competitively is a very pleasant bonus. It also added to the weight of the package.

The package also includes a variety of video cables and a very cool MSI Multimedia badge for your computer (if you are so inclined).

So how did the card perform? Very well. My Radeon 9500 was softmodded and performed approximately like a vanilla Radeon 9700. I attached images of the 3Dmark 2003 scores of the two cards. (Although the 9500 was modded, everything else is stock speeds for the sake of this comparison.) The new card's score was 2/3 higher than the older card. Quite an improvement.

[sammy2066]

Originally Posted by Cogar

We have recently had a large number of questions regarding the installation of NVIDIA video cards in computers that had been using ATI video cards and vice versa. I thought it may be helpful to compose a relatively non-technical post to help people avoid these problems by describing a successful video card upgrade. I will also add in a review for the MSI 6600GT card with which I was quite impressed.

Installation

This is the installation procedure I used to change from an ATI Radeon 9500 to an NVIDIA 6600GT in a machine running Windows XP Pro. Note: depending on your particular card, some of the names may change.

Step 1. Remove all ATI drivers using the Add/Remove programs. (The path in Windows XP is Start --> Control Panel --> Add or Remove Programs.) Remove the ATI control panel first. Remove the ATI drivers second. Remove the ATI uninstall utility last. You may be prompted to restart your computer. Choose no. We will not be doing any restarting.

Step 2. Go to video properties and remove those drivers. Right click your mouse on the desktop and select "Properties." In the Display Properties window, choose the Settings tab and click on the Advanced button. In the Plug and Play window, click on the Adapter tab and select "Properties." You will arrive at a window named after your video card. Click on the driver tab. Click on the "Uninstall" button. Select all the drivers and uninstall them. Again, you may be prompted to restart your computer. Choose no.

Step 3. Close all the windows. Turn off your computer.

Step 4. Remove the "old" video card and replace it with the "new" one.

Step 5. Start your computer. It will probably start in a lower quality mode--perhaps 640 x 480 resolution and perhaps 256 colors. This is normal. You do not yet have any installed drivers for your new card.

Step 6. After Windows XP starts up, it will notice the new hardware and pop up a wizard window. It will ask you if you want Windows to search for new drivers. This is OK. Put the driver CD in your CD or DVD drive and make sure the box is checked on the wizard that will search this drive. The driver should install without incident. You may be asked to restart your computer.

Step 7. After restarting your computer, adjust your settings. You will have a little NVIDIA icon in your system tray. Right click on this icon to bring up your options. Adjust them to the preferred settings.

and whats's the end result of doing all this??? .... A Positive Rep .... :wave2:

[Cogar]

Originally Posted by sλmmy2066

and whats's the end result of doing all this??? .... A Positive Rep .... :wave2:

Thank you sλmmy2066!

[sammy2066]

hehe .... nice guide Cogar .....

[Deer Slayer]

Cool, your scores look like they're right where they're supposed to be too. Good job, I prefer to use driver cleaner just to make sure I get rid of all the old junk. How's the fan on that card? You say it's solid copper, if so it might be a very good heatsink. What are your temps like? Run that rthdribl program with the temp thingy off to the edge, stretch the window as big as you can too. The fan is my main concern, every MSI fan has died on me, they don't use very good ones. The main problem is the shaft is plastic that goes through the bearing on their crappy little fans. It's a sleeve bearing too, so the shaft wears down and the fan gets noisy. Then the plastic shavings lock the fan, and it dies. Is it the typical MSI fan, or is it a ball bearing with a metal shaft? You can see if it's not covered with a sticker and the blades are clear. That's the only thing that makes me leary of the MSI, too many dead ones to chance it. If it's a good cooler, I'll order one and put my XFX in the puter I build for my buddy. That is only if it overclocks and performs better than the XFX.

[Cogar]

Originally Posted by Deer Slayer

Cool, your scores look like they're right where they're supposed to be too. Good job, I prefer to use driver cleaner just to make sure I get rid of all the old junk. How's the fan on that card? You say it's solid copper, if so it might be a very good heatsink. What are your temps like? Run that rthdribl program with the temp thingy off to the edge, stretch the window as big as you can too. The fan is my main concern, every MSI fan has died on me, they don't use very good ones. The main problem is the shaft is plastic that goes through the bearing on their crappy little fans. It's a sleeve bearing too, so the shaft wears down and the fan gets noisy. Then the plastic shavings lock the fan, and it dies. Is it the typical MSI fan, or is it a ball bearing with a metal shaft? You can see if it's not covered with a sticker and the blades are clear. That's the only thing that makes me leary of the MSI, too many dead ones to chance it. If it's a good cooler, I'll order one and put my XFX in the puter I build for my buddy. That is only if it overclocks and performs better than the XFX.

I do not know what the temperature is since temperature monitoring does not seem to be enabled with this card. (At least I did not notice it yet. It is still new to me. ) I will have to check into it further, and the feature may be enabled with a BIOS update or something.

The fan itself is a clear plastic with some whitish opacity. There is an MSI label on the top. You can see some silver metal in its center perhaps 3/4 inch in diameter. I attached two images (from Newegg and FiringSquad) showing how it looks. In the first image, which shows the entire card, you can see the shine of the top edge just below the MSI label. The second image, a close-up, shows it a little better, but the contrast is not as great and it is harder to see unless you know what you are looking for. I tried taking a picture of it myself, but the result was not as clear as these images.

I also added a third image showing the back of the card. I read that the HSF tended to come loose from some early versions, so MSI added a metal back brace to insure that no longer happens. Let me add that this brace looks bigger in reality than it does in this picture. It is a substantial piece of metal.

Let me add (for those who do not know) that the HSF is different on this version than the PCIe version. The fan is quite large and is also very quiet. I cannot hear it above the other fans.

[Jliao]

Good guide & review!

I want to add that I thought using Driver Cleaner was nice. It scanned thru your registry and file see if there is any ATI drivers left. I think it's a good way to clean out driver completely.

Also, I recently acquire the same card and love it. The performance have increased and the fan is incredible QUIET! My old card is 9700Pro Ultimate (no fan) and this card is just as quiet as no fan!

[Brian]

Great, stuff!

[yamawho]

Good one

I find when I change cards windows likes to go online and look for drivers on it's own.

So I have gotten into the habit of unpluging my RJ45 cable before restarting the system after changing the card. This prevents windows from installing old drivers and prompts you to do it manually.

[Substance_abx]

yoour guide is the way i do it........... for some reason people made me think i was doing it wrong because they always said MAN did you format... ahhh no...im just glad to see someone else using that method also nice scores....cant wait to get my NEW x800 Xt, my other one had big problems like... fan wasnt attached to the card =/ yes i was ****** but eh newegg took it back (FULL REFUND :P) waiting for a particular card to come back in stock since the card i ordered isnt in stock any more..

[barureddy]

After having this card for a little more than a week, I'm throughly impressed with this card. It is quite and fast. Two things I need in a graphics card.

A side note is that anyone with this card or a 6600 in general should upgrade thier drivers to the 67.xx or greater drivers to get their purevideo working. While does not perform miracles on crapy videos it does make them look better and drastically reduce the amount of cpu power they use.

[Cogar]

Thanks to everyone for the additional comments. They will be very helpful to those who are looking for this information.

Originally Posted by barureddy

After having this card for a little more than a week, I'm throughly impressed with this card. It is quite and fast. Two things I need in a graphics card.

A side note is that anyone with this card or a 6600 in general should upgrade thier drivers to the 67.xx or greater drivers to get their purevideo working. While does not perform miracles on crapy videos it does make them look better and drastically reduce the amount of cpu power they use.

That reminds me that I did not mention the driver that came on the included driver CD. It was 71.22.

[Deer Slayer]

It's part of the Nvidia drivers, even my FX 5200 has it! Try looking at the screenshot and see if that helps you find it. It should be on the tab that says 6600GT, and you might have to click the little green oval to make the additional features appear. I've circled their locations in red, I hate how they hide that. Almost every modern card has this, especially high performance cards. The little green oval/button thingy toggles the menu to pop up and disappear. That would be a deal breaker if MSI didn't include temp monitoring. I suppose if they don't, they either feel confident enough that the card is cooled right, or they don't want you to see how crappy the heatsink is! Either way, that SUX BIG TIME, there's functionality in the drivers, and a thermal diode in the stinkin GPU! No reason whatsoever to exclude it.

[Cogar]

I looked and that option is not included in the present BIOS/driver.