Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

Nvidia 8600GT/GTS cards benchmarked. And the winner is…

Sunday, April 22nd, 2007


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