With a street price of under $120, the Albatron GeForce 6600 is easily the least expensive card in this comparison. It's also the only vanilla entry, although Albatron also makes a number of GeForce 6600 GT cards. We decided to include the GeForce 6600 not only to see how it stacks up to the faster and more expensive GeForce 6600 GT, but also how it compares with the vanilla end of ATI's Radeon X700 lineup.

At such an affordable price point, it would be unfair to expect a dazzling bundle or wild extras from the Albatron GeForce 6600. Still, the card manages to deliver a few surprises.

Unfortunately, aesthetics isn't one of them. The card comes on a turquoise board with a copper and gold heat sink that barely hints at bling. Of the five graphics cards we're looking at today, four are turquoise or blue, making it hard for the Albatron GeForce 6600 to stand out on looks alone. The card's use of plain old DDR SDRAM chips is unique, though. The other cards we'll be looking at use fancy GDDR3 chips rated for higher speeds at lower voltages.

As you might expect, the Albatron GeForce 6600's port cluster has a standard array of DVI, VGA, and S-Video output ports. The card also comes with a nice little output dongle that greatly expands its video output capabilities.

The NVIDIA-branded dongle serves up a full array of video output ports, including component, composite, and S-Video. Those looking to use the card in a home theater PC will surely appreciate its output flexibility, but that's unfortunately it for the cable bundle. The card doesn't even come with a DVI-to-VGA adapter.

In the software department, Albatron really drops the ball. The inclusion of WinDVD Creator is a nice touch, but it's backed up by a copy of Arx Fatalis and quite possibly the most worthless game demo CD ever created. With demos of ancient titles like Rally Trophy and the original Max Payne, you'll likely derive more entertainment from microwaving the CD than actually using it. You can snag much newer, better game demos free of charge from sites like FileShack, anyway.

To Albatron's credit, the card's warranty is decent. The card has full parts and labor coverage for one year, with an additional two years of labor-only coverage. It's not the best warranty of the bunch, but it's not the worst.