PC thermodynamics has bore a multi-million dollar industry employing thousands world-wide. Every micro-chip generates heat and there are GPU's today which practically rival their CPU counterparts in dissipated wattage. The NV43 isn't problematic by any stretch and will run IDLE between 44°C and 48°C in a case temp of approximately 27°C. The GPU requires active or heat-pipe enhanced passive cooling and in some cases passive will suffice if the surface area and mass are adequate. Of course if your case-temp is on the high side as a result of poor ventilation and/or lack of maintenance (cleaning dust bunnies etc.) it doesn’t take much for a $199 card to perform at the level of a $99 card in a well ventilated system. Asus uses copper coated aluminum GPU and memory heatsinks and in a Thermaltake Kandalf the N6600GT ran around 44°C IDLE / 52°C LOAD.



Simple, effective the heatsink-fan combo cools the GPU, then continues through a side and primary vent flowing over the SDRAM heatsinks.



Overall the card's cooling compliment is simple well thought out and effective. As shown in the previous section Asus Smart Doctor utility and HyperDrive N6600GT can benefit from Asus Smart Doctor which is infinitely adjustable. Cooling fan RPM speeds ranged from 3000RPM ~ 5000RPM at full-out. This leads us to Overclocking.

Overclocking has run amuck over the last five years and if you look you can find more then one article on overclocking your optical mouse. It's become a slight obsession. it used to be overclocking was simply to extract more performance from an old CPU, heck compared to the frenzy of today even the those whom sold overclocked CPUs re-marked were simple thieves, now people are spending lots of time and money pouring LN2 down a tube for a screenshot overclock.

Unfortunately our N6600GTs didn't fare so well reaching a top OC around 555MHz core / 1.05GHz memory with any appreciable results. The core was able to run up to 600MHz, yet this produced a lower score. I lowered the memory which seemed to be the culprit yet problems still existed, in the end the card produced better results with small increments. Clicking on the thumbnails below exemplifies a single N6600GT running at 600/1000Mz and 555/1050MHz while running 3DMark2001SE.

N6600GT 600/1000 ||| N6600GT 555/1050


As the 3DMark2001SE scores indicate, the highest attainable clock speeds do not always generate the best benchmark number. In fact the differences are usually quite subtle, whenever I overclock any aspect of my system albeit the CPU. GPU video memory, main memory, North Bridge or South Bridge, I will find the highest stable speed, benchmark, then try again after backing off a few MHz. It's usually as simple as the heat generated and cooling related, all things being equal if you’re not changing out the cooling system, then incremental decreases in speed/voltage will eventually help find the "sweet spot."