Official Website
http://global.aopen.com.tw/products/vga/Aeolus6200-DV256.htm

Overview
This 6200 card is one of the special GF6200 AGP card available in market, mainly because of its overclocked core speed of 400mhz and softmodable. The core is still based on A2 core, which is use in GF6600, now most of the GF6200 is based on A4, how to differentiate them, well depend on luck. Like me for instance, I googling a whole day long still cant find any detailed review about this Aeolus card (quite a stupid name, wonder what that means). So I take risk of buying this Aeolus, but it turn out to be a very good asset to me. So I decided to help those who wanna buy Aeolus.

Construction
Its using the black PCB (which is the trend of Aopen), the ram are aligned in opened "V" shape and mostly covered by the heat sink fan. The back side ram doesnt have ramsink at all, so if you want to overclock the ram speed then need to add some ramsink. The maximum speed of memory clock is 4ns, which mean 500mhz, so not good for overclocker. This card is good for default use but not recommended to overclocker.

Softmoding
Most of the 6200 in the market are capable of softmoding, cause their core are exactly the same as 6600. But note, there are only some of the core revision with this kind of capabilities.
NV43 = Geforce 6600 (8 pipeline)
NV43V = Geforce 6200 (4 pipeline)
NV43V A1 = Best revision of 6200, near exactly the same as 6600, highly overclockable and softmoddable (according to some source, Winfast have this core, but no real prove)
NV43V A2 = Good revision of 6200, softmoddable and good overclockability (Aopen yay!!!)
NV43V A3 = Unknown, dont even know if it is exist...
NV43V A4 = Most of the 6200 in Malaysian market are base on this core, beware this core are made to block softmodding, so far no method to softmod it.
NV44A = Cheaper and low performance, 64bit memory bandwidth, native AGP design no HSI.
If you are using A1 and A2 core, they can be easily softmod to 6600 by using Rivatuner, latest version are recommended.

BIOSmoding
The only good about softmoding are increasing the pipeline of the card, but it doesnt get any of the hidden function of the Geforce 6600. There are few function you can unblock by using BIOSmoding :
1. HDR (High Dynamic Range) - better graphic
2. Z Compression - should gain more speed when apply
3. Temperature sensor - built-in sensor in 6200 and 6600, but somehow Nvidia block it
By using BIOSmoding you can call these function out, I have tried several BIOS from different Manufacturer, but no luck, the result are bad. Hopefully someone can send me the original Aopen 6600 256MB AGP BIOS to me to test out.

XFX GeForce 6600 256MB AGP
Flash successful, comes with temperature sensor. When examined using NiBiTor v2.5 it stated 300/500MHz, after flashing it become 300/550MHz... The performance less than the original GeForce 6200 I have. So it is probably not suitable for my card.

PNY GeForce 6600 256MB AGP
Flash successful. At the AGP post screen, it states the memory size to be 128MB, definately having problem with Windows XP, so incompatible with my card.

Gigabyte GeForce 6600 256MB AGP (400/500mhz)
Still facing the same problem like PNY, detect as 128MB video memory.

Result

In 3dmark2003, I have set three type of setting, underclocking, normal and softmoding.
Underclocking : 300/500mhz (using powerstrip)
Normal : 400/500mhz
Softmoding : 400/500mhz (8 pipeline using Rivatuner)

Underclocking 12.1% < Normal
Softmoding 16.1% > Normal

Result update : With Pentium 4 2.8ghz
3dmark03
4 pipeline = 4500
8 pipeline = 5400
The result is quite stable, I do a lot of benchmarking on this card but the result is the same.

Pros
1. The card are default overlclocked by manufacturer.
2. Good success rate of softmod to 6600.
3. Stable card for AGP.

Cons
1. Simple bundle.
2. No ramsink for back side ram.
3. Fan is quite noisy.

This post has been edited by karising: Mar 3 2006, 12:17 AM