GamePyre sheds some light on the AOpen Aeolus 6600GT PCIe graphics card. AOpen is a Taiwanese manufacturer of motherboards and video cards and other computer equipment. They are part of the Acer conglomerate of companies in Taiwan. Acer has a market capitalization of over $10 Billion, a large sum in today's age of computer companies. Acer has a history of over 20 years of manufacturing experience. AOpen makes video cards based upon NVIDIA chipsets, including the GeForce FX5600 (they had 22 varieties of cards based upon the GeForce FX5600 chipset), the GeForce 6800 and the GeForce 6600GT, which I'm reviewing here.

AOpen Aeolus 6600GT-DV128 Review

The AOpen Aeolus 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, an eForum to get help and an 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 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).