BFG has been building quite a following in the past few years with their excellent line of nVidia powered video cards, and today we pit their 6600GT OC against Gigabytes ATI powered X800. So what does SBD mean? Silent But Deadly. The X800 is a totally silent, fanless design that should appeal to system builders who want a silent or near silent machine. I know the HTPC crowd is giving this card a serious looking over for sure.

Today, we will be putting both cards through their paces to see how they compare to one another. Some will argue that the extra memory on the X800 is unfair. I would disagree. It was obvious ATI’s X700 was not going to be competitive on the higher side of the mid range, so they stepped up like a good Marine and adapted. Both the cards we are looking at today can be found in the sub $250.00 US price range, and as is always the case, it boils down to the bottom line--cost.

That being said, I still think the cards are being aimed at a slightly different portion of the same market segment. In the case of Gigabyte’s X800, it will be hard for users looking for a card capable of playing today’s games, and silently powering an HTPC to ignore this card. BFG won the coin toss, so we will start with the 6600 GT OC.

This quote from their website sums up BFG’s approach to building and selling video cards:

Many of our employees are gamers and PC enthusiasts, and we provide hardware and marketing that reflects our passion and excitement for the latest technology. We build hardware that is stable, well supported and cost competitive.

Now I know every company out there wants you to believe they are cool modders and gamers just like you are, but in BFG’s case, I get the feeling it goes beyond hype and rings true. The 6600 GT OC is my first hands-on experience with one of their cards as they only build on NVIDIA’s GPU’s, but you would have to be blind to miss all the press they get. Recently they have ventured into the motherboard market with their NF4 powered BFGRNF4U which you can read an excellent review on by the guys at [H]ardOCP here.

Gigabyte is known for their motherboards. They've had some success with the enthusiast market over the years, more so for feature rich, stable boards than massive overclockers. If you visit their site here, you will find the usual Asian leaning English translation typical of Taiwanese companies; readable, but off a bit. I find it a little humorous that we have a video card from a company that builds motherboards, and another from a video card company getting into the motherboard market. If BFG’s track history to date is any indication, the motherboard companies may soon regret casting their sights on the video card market. For company score, I am going with the American team because I really feel like they relate to me better.