XFX GeFORCE 8600 GTS XXX Review - PAGE 5

Personally for me the 8600 and 8500 series leaves a lot to be desired. It's just doesn't have a considerable enough jump in performance, they seem to be relying on DX10 and there HD Video abilities to sell these cards and i personally don't think that will float well with the gaming community. We expect a certain performance gain to buy a new card and this seems to be throttled back to much, maybe Nvidia did this on purpose, after all it wont be long until a DX10 game comes out that we will want to purchase and then we will have no choice to buy. I will wait to see what AMD/ATI choose to release before i lay down my hard earned cash.

Maybe Nvidia will suffer the same consequences as ATI has in the past. ATI were the first to release DX9 and it has never been seen by a large portion of people to have always been a step behind Nvidia. Now they seem to have jumped the gun and now they may perpetually be a step behind ATI for the DX10 hardware future. Remember first out the gate doesn't always mean first to the finish line.

So i say this if you can, wait until ATI has released there DX10 card and then compare the 2 and buy the best, but until then be happy playing your DX9 games as at least on the current DX9 hardware you will get good performance and your money's worth.

DX10 is the future of gaming but i will not buy in to it unless i can be 100% sure that i'm getting my money's worth, and not forced into buying second rate hardware because a company knows i will eventually have to buy.

David Lane

I have to say I'm kind of disappointed though. I was expecting a massive jump in performance over my current 7600GT, like when I switched my 6600GT for this card. Being fourteen years old, money is a big problem and I can only upgrade once or twice a year to new, mid range hardware. I was really waiting for these cards to be power the graphics in my upcoming build in May, but instead I think I'd be better of waiting until AMD/ATI releases it's R600-core series. I might have to delay the build or go for a nice DX9 card instead, though neither option is really appealing.
I wish it was possible to make a reasonable prediction on when DX10 becomes necessary for gamers, Crysis is the only DX10 compatible game I can think off for now. I would assume DX10 doesn't become a must for another year or so, maybe I should stick to DX9 for now and go DX10 for Christmas or something along those lines. Either way, I'm going to wait and see what ATI comes up with, this might be the time for me to switch. If not, at least the price will have dropped by than.

Nvidia can tote Dx10 right now all it wants but... no games yet and Ati is just around the corner with their solutions. The performance should be better and theres no excuse for beta drivers even if it is a soft launch and reviewers had these cards for weeks. I want my X2900XT with HDMI and onboard HD-Audio thank you.

Drivers supporting DX10 are finally out for vista, so at least the preparation steps are done. Now we just need some games. The beta tests for Age of Conanan, a new MMO which supports DX10 will go live this June.

Wow, that was depressing....

I guess I won't be getting this card then.

The same performance pattern has been repeated time over time over time. The x1800 performed similar to the x800 in SM2.0 benches and games, and had a great improvement in games allowing SM3 to be used, or fall back to SM2 if not supported. The 8600 performs similar to a 7600 in SM2/3 games and benches clock for clock. When there are DX10 enabled games that allow themselves to be run in a DX9 mode, the 8600 will shine over the 7600.

You can't expect new architecture and ways of rendering things be applied to the old.

Why get a DirectX10 card if I'm not planning on using Vista for over a year?

Not sure why you were looking at the 8xxx card in the first place then.

Because I want as much performance as I can get before I am forced to upgrade to a new rig, which will unfortunately be soon.