NVIDIA GeForce 8600 and 8500 launch deets outed

Still haven't scraped together enough change to get yourself a fancy new 8800? Well just wait 10 more days and you can get (a little bit of) that hip-cool technology for peanuts. The GeForce 8600 GTS, 8600 GT and 8500 GT are all due on April 17th, hitting at the $199-$229, $149-$159 and $89-$129 price points, respectively. Specs scale nicely, with 256MB of GDDR3, a 675MHz core clock and a 1000MHz memory clock at the top end, on down to the 128 to 256MB DDR2 or GDDR3, 450MHz core clock and 700MHz memory clock at the bottom. Before too long, the even more basic 8400 GS and 8300 GS will round out the set, but hopefully you won't have to stoop that low to get your DirectX 10 on.

[nizzy1115 @ Apr 9th 2007 9:52PM]

The 8600 GTS will be one heck of a price/performance card.

[Jeff @ Apr 9th 2007 10:07PM]

From the scores I've seen, it actually looks like the 8600GT gives the best bang for the buck. Of course, the GTS is only $50-$60 more, but percentage-wise, you're not getting a 33% increase in performance over the GT. You *do* get a better than 50% increase in performance going from the 8500 to the 8600GT, though.

[Sean @ Apr 9th 2007 10:17PM]

Oh wow, that's splendid. Two days after I bought an Radeon X1900 GT.

*grumble*

[Ayle @ Apr 9th 2007 11:16PM]

Cool affordable dx10 card but will the really low end card will be real dx10 card? Not rebadged card "a la" gf4 MX?

[DAZA @ Apr 9th 2007 11:27PM]

They are *all* DX10 cards, nothing like the MX series.

[BBREED @ Apr 9th 2007 11:51PM]

Crap. I just got a 7600GT less than a month ago for $120. If I would have known these were coming so soon I would have waited. It's a decent card, but for the same price I could have dx10:-(

[ghost_zw @ May 10th 2007 3:00PM]

ye i did the same thing but bought inno 3D
crap card inno 3D dont buy

[John Doe @ Apr 9th 2007 11:52PM]

Are these SLI cards? *drools*

[Somedude @ Apr 10th 2007 12:15AM]

It has the connector so my guess is yes. I'm actualy wondering what kind of memory interface these things are running.

[Einhanderkiller @ Apr 10th 2007 1:16AM]

128-bit.
If you think about it, a 128-bit interface is actually better for this type of card than a 256-bit one. A 128-bit interface allows the card to reach higher memory clock speeds while keeping the costs low, which is more beneficial to this type of card as it's made for lower resolutions such as 1280x1024.

[islndboi @ Apr 10th 2007 12:38AM]

Hmmm... I though they were going to have at least a 512MB version of the 8600GTS.

[brad @ Apr 10th 2007 12:39AM]

any links post #2

[akijikan @ Apr 10th 2007 2:00AM]

screw that shiz...where's the 8950?

[Pedro @ Apr 10th 2007 5:10AM]

Haha, shit! I did not think of that, but seriously, I and a lot of other "hardware enthusiasts" would sell our 8800GTXs at the drop of a hat if an 8950 was put on the market.

Come on the NVIDIA, chop chop.

[akijikan @ Apr 10th 2007 5:32AM]

I bought my 8800 only a few weeks ago so with EVGA I can step up no problem! w00t

[ShaleX @ Apr 10th 2007 5:41AM]

Oh please let one of those be an AGP card. I need me a DX10 AGP card... And my 6800GT has heating issues. So replaceing that with one of these would be the coolest thing ever..

[Frank @ Apr 10th 2007 6:54AM]

Seriously, AGP? With how cheap these cards are, the coolest thing ever for you would probably be to make the equally cheap switch to pci-express. I was lucky enough to have had a roommate that had a 6600GT AGP to compare to my old 6600GT PCI-X card and the difference in performance easily justified dropping AGP. Paying for an AGP version of these cards is like spending your money on a Dodge Viper when you don't have a road to drive it on . . or tires . . . and then putting sugar in the gas tank.

I promise I'm not wanting this reply to come off like I'm being a jerk. I just really hope you consider switching and staying ahead of / with the times. You'll be happy you did.

[ShaleX @ Apr 10th 2007 7:26AM]

From the numbers I've seen on many benchmarking sites, the AGP-PCI-E difference is really not too substantial. 2-3FPS difference. Anyway, being able to pay $149-$199 is much prefered to spednging the extra $100 for a new socket 939 Motherboard that I'll have to replace again in about a year when my Athlon 64 3200+ has outlived it's usefulness.

As I said, my current Video Card already has heating issues and needs replacement... So, what would I be wasteing? The money for buying that vid card? Or the money on buying a whole new system that will have to be re-purchased in a year.

[Frank @ Apr 10th 2007 3:33PM]

the money for buying that video card that you'll have to replace in a year anyway. As per the difference - The chain gun on the helicopter in BF2 on my roommates card looked like a gross MSpaint block instead of like a chain gun. And the water looked like tar.

I can't tell you what the FPS diff. would be but in terms of texture, shading, and everything else that matters - the difference is incredible.

[Josh @ Apr 10th 2007 2:11PM]

Get the NV Silencer for your 6800GT. $20 + good and quiet cooling. Looks like it's sold out, but this one gets good reviews, too: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186001

[Steve @ Apr 10th 2007 9:18AM]

Any word on when mobile DX10 cards will be available? I'm holding off a new purchase for a DX10 laptop.

[steve.bruno @ Apr 10th 2007 10:53AM]

What about the 8600 Ultra??

[Josh @ Apr 10th 2007 2:09PM]

Upgrading your video card means going PCI-E.
PCI-E means new motherboard.
New motherboard means new CPU.
Don't forget the RAM.
With a new motherboard & high-end video card you'll probably need a new power supply.

These things add up fast.

This is why I still have a 6800 Ultra AGP.

[Bryan @ Apr 10th 2007 4:22PM]

I just bought a 7900 GS last month and now I am going to use EVGA's Step-Up program to get the 8600GT for cheeeap. :D

[DANIEL @ Apr 10th 2007 7:03PM]

Are they ever going to use hdmi?

[Joe @ Apr 11th 2007 12:20AM]

DP is better than HDMI

[Shibathedog @ Apr 11th 2007 11:04PM]

and running 2 in SLI sounds like a good idea, i think i may do this :D

[josh @ Apr 17th 2007 7:02PM]

Dude, look at the numbers...
200 or so for (if they come out with one *i hope so*)an 8600 AGP card,
500-700 for new mobo cpu ram psu (psu can occasionally be removed) and since agp stuff wont sell, you cant sell it for money, so if you dont feel like paying 600 bucks, you could pay 200 and it wont be as much of a cpu bottleneck as u would think, D3D10 has many advantages that take loads off the CPU and put it on the more powerful GPU, so the only bottlenecks will be AGP bandwidth (some say that was never a problem anyways) and system memory.

[Tom @ May 9th 2007 2:39PM]

I agree, I'd like a AGP card too. I have a decent machine that I use for Home Theater (DVD playback) only (no gaming). I need a new graphics card since my old one died, and I heard with the 8xxx series there are serious improvement in hardware assist for avc/vc1 which is used for the hdformats (HDDVD and BluRay). This means that if I later buy a drive, I could actually run hd movies on it without upgrading my entire setup (cashflow is not too good at the moment..) - again, don't care about gaming, which is where I think AGP would be the bigger bottleneck anyways. Lastly, anyone know if all 8xxx cards support hdcp 'default'? Some companies are not good at telling you...

[8600GTSowner @ May 24th 2007 9:28PM]

I had the same $$ concerns about making the PCI-e jump, but after some serious searching, found a couple mobo's that supported either AGP or PCI-e, & also support DDR or DDR2, allowing you to use any combination of components, & upgrade at your leisure. It's a socket 775 board, which meant upgrading from my old Athlon(went with a Core2Duo), but I could keep my DDR400 RAM & my AGP video card until these DX10 cards came out.

Bought an XFX 8600 GTS the day they went on sale... Upgraded from an ATI x800GTO AGP(OC'd). Quite a difference!
3dmark05 scores went from around 5000-5500max to around 9500-10000max, and
3dmark06 scores went from around 1500-2000max to around 4500-5000max.
Can finally run all my games at max detail@1280x1024, AF/AA on, & still be smooth & playable, but I've recently started noticing artifacts & video abnormalities that I have yet to eradicate... Happens regardless of drivers installed... wondering if I got a bad one...

Sadly, now that I've upgraded all of my components, I'm looking for a new motherboard again.... Anybody want this one? :)
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=775Dual-VSTA

[John @ Jun 2nd 2007 2:20PM]

8600GTSowner ,
How much do you want for it?

[8600GTSowner @ Jun 3rd 2007 3:04AM]

already gone, but you can pick up a similar mobo on Newegg around $60 - the newer 4-core version