Nvidia 8600GT/GTS cards benchmarked. And the winner is…
The Inquirer just put out another quality review/benchmark, this time the contenders are 4 Nvidia 8600 graphics cards:
- Sparkle 8600GT (€149.00)
- EVGA 8600GTS (€199.00)
- Gainward 8600GTS Golden Sample(€199.00)
- Sparkle 8600GTS (€199.00)
According to the benchmarks performed, both the Sparkle and Gainward cards are top-notch implementations of the Nvidia 8600GTS model , not to mention the very competitive prices.
Here are the full benchmark scores, and here is the resume:
In Short
In short, Nvidia did a brilliant job and replaced its 7600GT and 7600GS with rock-solid performing, DX10-compliant parts. These parts are more far apart from the high-end of the past, but give surprisingly good value for money.
The 8600GT comes a bit short on expectations, so we would advise you to bite the bullet and opt for a higher performing part. If you are considering multi-GPU configuration, just go straight for glory and get a high-end part. µ
The Good
+ DirectX 10 for 149/199 price brackets
+ 8600GTS: Performance in games
+ 8600GTS: Beats 7800/7900/X1800/X1950Pro cards easily
The Bad
- 8600GT: visible performance difference
- 8600GTS: SLI is not worth it
- 8600GTS: difference between high-end and mainstream is now greater than in the past
May 4th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I know various people have various opinions about this, but for the record, the 8600GT is a good overclocker because of its onboard fan (it’s also a very quiet card). It seems to be perfectly stable at around 620Mhz/1.6 Ghz(on a decent system), which obviously then makes it a better value, since its performance at that point more closely rivals the GTS. Just a thought. In other words, if you don’t like overclocking, get the GTS. If you don’t mind doing it, I think the GT is the better deal, as a stable 620/1600 card for 150 bones is unheard of. I believe you can get a GT on sale at Circuit City right now for $119 after rebate.
September 21st, 2007 at 6:51 pm
can you overclock one in a laptop? i am looking for info on the 8600gt for a laptop and wonder if you overclock it… will it ever fry your system by putting out too much heat?