8600gts review

[Dan0512]

Xbitlabs (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce8600gts.html)

Honestly I thought the card would match or be faster than the 7950gt, but it seems it can only match the performance of the 7900gs when it comes to real game numbers. The 7950gt is just plain faster in pretty much all games, IIRC the 8600gts only could only match the 7950gt in the outdoor benchmark of Oblivion, 3dMark, and maybe another game or 2. I

Sure, performance may increase as new drivers are released, but considering this card costs around $200, and a 7900gs can be had for $140, I'd go for the latter, even though it doesn't support DX10. We still don't know how well the 8600gts will stack up against DX10 titles. Could be the same GF5/DX9 problem again.

dan

[Neural Net]

It'll be interesting to see how it can handle Crysis, whether or not switching on DX10 features will enable it to run the game with better looking graphics than say a 7900GT or x1950 Pro (which will be on DX9 obviously) or if the ability to run DX10 turns out to be pretty much useless. That and you've got to add the price of buying Vista to run DX10 to the price of the graphics card, and then suddenly the cheaper older cards look even better.

[pak]

Thanks. You make me feel a lot better. I bought a 7900gt a few weeks ago for my son in our classies and was kicking myself when I saw the 8600gt pricing.

I really do not understand the whole DX thing to be honest. I think I understand that DX10 should look better, but maybe the 8600gt>7900gs in DX10 games?

I'm not sure that even makes sense.

--pak

[Neural Net]

Well there wouldn't be much point in making the 8600 a dx10 card if it couldn't run dx10 well. DX10 is far more efficient, which means that games using it should run better than the older cards, just not in DX9 games.

[deathman20]

DX10 on paper is ~33% more effiecent than DX9. Weather or not true in games is to see because well with DX10, surely there will be more effects added to negate the extra effiencey in most cases.

The bottlenck is the 128-bit memory interface. Thats the killer on the card i think. Same as the HD 2600XT card for ATI with the 128-bit interface but if not mistaken so far its out preforming the 8600GTS. Either way its a sad generation for mid-range cards. Why oh why can't they do a 256-bit interface and give people a nice choice.

[Burninate]

I think it would definitely be wise to wait it out and see how the new DX10 cards actually perform in DX10 games. It's not like all the developers are going to all of the sudden jump to requiring a DX10 card and vista ANY time soon. I'm really considering waiting to jump to vista when I do another complete PC build (18 months away minimum) and then buying a DX10 card when games actually start utilizing it well and/or requiring it.

And to Pak: Don't sweat it. The 7900 GT is an excellent card as no game will REQUIRE DX10 any time soon (maybe halo 2?, but who cares about Halo?). Maybe you should try V-modding it. Its really easy and only costs about $30 between added cooling and a conductive pen. I got an extra %50 performance out of the card after v-modding and about the same temps after upgrading the cooling.