Pny 6600gt

Ok forgive me here but, I have been on the ATI bandwagon and today i purchased a PNY 6600GT.

Im looking at all the posts and everything, I cant quite understand what I need to do to make this card optimal as can be.

DO i use nvidia's drivers or a hacked driver (like omega for ati)

What specific function does Rivatuner do? what is softquadro4? and why is it included in rivatuner?

Is there a firmware flash or other type of mods for the 6600gt that i could possible use?

Forgive me for all the questions but i have not used an nvidia card in a super long time. Thanks in advance

This is a good place to start.
http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_1.html

I can only answer a few of your questions, but you can use the newest forceware drivers ... I prefere them for stability .. RivaTuner OCs, Unlocks Pipoes / Vertex Shaders for other cards, and other various options. I think Softquadro does the same thing as RivaTuner except it unlocks pipes / vertex shaders on Nvidia Quadro series cards, I havn't heard of anyone flashing 6600gts to 6800gts or anything higher. But, have fun with your new 6600Gts, they truely rock for the price.

Thanks everyone for the info, only one more question came to mind.

Note that overclocking using Coolbits doesn't work for GeForce 6 series graphics cards and SLI. Also note that on the GeForce 6 series using SLI, if you exit a 3D game your clock speeds may remain high instead of reverting back to standard 2D clock frequency. You must reboot in this situation, as this is a bug with the latest Forceware drivers.

Click to expand...

So exactly how does one overclock the 6x00 series and allow windows to keep the settings if coolbits does not do this?

youll be fine, this is only for 2 6 series cards in SLI. with a single card, youll be good to go.