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Today we are going to compare some of NVIDIA's latest in their mid-range offerings: the 8600 GT/GTS family of video cards.
At the heart of the 8600 GT/GTS class card is the recently released G84 core. The G84 is a slimmed down version of the blazing-fast flagship G80 GPU core, which is (as of mid-June) still the biggest commercial GPU on the market, with a transistor count of over 680 million. The G84 came out in April, primarily to address an upcoming need for Vista-ready, performance-class cards able to handle soon to be released DirectX 10 games. While the G80/8800 series GPU's are aimed more towards the hardcore gamer crowd who will only settle for peak performance, the G84 family aims to strike a balance between performance and an affordable price ($125-$225).
Previously, in our April review of the XFX 8600 GT XXX, the 8600 GT was shown to be a solid upgrade choice for someone with an aging, under-performing GPU. Benchmarks indicated that the XFX 8600 GT XXX vastly outperformed 6600 GT class cards, while offering only slight performance gains over 7600 GT cards. However, if you consider that the 8600's all utilize the new unified shader model, and with PureVideo HD (for optimized Blu-Ray and HD DVD playback), as having Coverage Sampling Antialiasing technology (which reduces the processing strain of AA on your GPU), then going the 8600 GT/GTS route makes a lot of sense. Especially when you can find 8600 GT's retailing for only 10 or 20 dollars more than the 7600 GT's.
But what 8600 GT/GTS should you chose? Well, that's what we are going to try to help you decide. The good news is that you have no shortage of options. The competitors we have selected for this roundup, in alphabetical order are: the Asus EN8600 GTS, the Asus EN8600 GTS TOP, the Gigabyte 8600 GT, the Gigabyte 8600 GTS OC, MSI's NX8600 GTS, the XFX 8600 GT, and the XFX 8600 GTS.
Here is a brief chart comparing the vital digits of these editions:
| 8600 Roundup | Asus EN8600 GTS | Asus EN8600 GTS TOP | Gigabyte 8600 GT | Gigabyte 8600 GTS | MSI NX8600 GTS | XFX 8600 GT | XFX 8600 GTS |
| Core Frequency | 680 | 745 | 600 | 675 | 675 | 620 | 730 |
| Memory Frequency | 2000 | 2000 | 1400 | 2000 | 2000 | 1400 | 2260 |
| Memory Interface | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit |
| Memory | 256 MB | 256 MB | 256 MB | 256 MB | 256 MB | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Stream Processors | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
As you are probably aware, this chart doesn't really tell the whole story. All these cards are playing in the same league, so, when considering one edition over the other, you will probably want to look at other factors beyond clock speeds -- such as the bundled software, price, and cooling options for example -- in order to better help you make the right choice.
Without further delay, let's see what these 8600 GT/GTS's can do, and see if any particular card can steal the show...
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I'm reading it now. =D
Oh, and FIRST!
whoever wrote it.... thanks and now to read..
but its a good review. however i would never consider a 8600 when the 8800GTS 320mb doubles it for just a bit more. and thats what gamers want is power(i am a gamer) for an office machine or the occasional gamer though, hte 8600 would be great.
I haven't read much on AMDs plans, only that their R600 struggled against the 8800 series.
Also, you do not state wht drivers are being used for the test. Are they manufacturer's(possibly tweaked) or reference Nvidia(version) drivers? This leads me to a question. Why do the '3D Mark Simple Shader Performance' scores seem skewed against the other 3D Mark scores in the test, based on GPU and memory speeds?
Finally, why was the CoH DX10 patch chosen not to be used for scoring these DX10 cards?
Thank you in advance for any insight into these questions.
To finish, are the G84 GPU's overclockable with any third party utilities?
1- The chart info for the XFX 8600 gts was incorrect, and has been fixed. The info on the XFX page is correct: I had the PVT84GUDD3 model. (730/2260).
2-Sorry for not stating the drivers used; that info will always be in my forthcoming articles. I used the standard, latest Forceware drivers (158.22) dl'ed from nvidia.com
3-As for the simple shader performance question, I'm not exactly sure what you are wondering here -- are you curios as to why the XFX GT did so much better than the Gigabyte GT ?
4- Ideally we would have liked to include the Coh DX10 patch numbers. However, primarily due to time constraints, we decided not to throw those in. However, in my next article, which will not be out too long the road (might be finished by next Friday -- don't quote on that though) we'll be looking at some DirectX 10 numbers, and included will be 8600 GTS or GT (or both) benchmarks for CoH w/the patch.
5- My article's conclusion will not be changed. The XFX chart numbers was a typo; and I have not done any first-hand benching of their DirectX 10 performance so I can not say anything about how well they'll do at this point.
Finally, 6, I have not overclocked these cards myself, but you can do so with RivaTuner, (and perhaps some other programs.)
Sincere thanks for your comments LoneRangers. Criticisms like this sharpen my ability to deliver high quality articles for you guys.
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