NVIDIA's
GeForce 8600 GTS graphics card has been attracting a fair bit of interest with its relatively low price tag and promised performance gains, but we're guessing most of you aren't just going to go on NVIDIA's word to make your purchase decision. Helping out in that respect, the folks at PC Perspective have put the card through the usual battery of tests to see just how well it stacks up. While they certainly welcomed the $199-229 price tag, they were somewhat let down by the card's performance, with it getting out-performed in some cases by ATI's comparatively priced X1950 Pro. That said, the 8600 GTS does still have the edge when it comes to
DirectX 10 support, which they say should be enough to at least garner it some consideration from budget-minded gamers.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
pyro @ Apr 17th 2007 3:10PM
Ya, the card was reviewed a while ago when it came out in austrailia and it preformed worse then silimarly price dx9 cards. Lack of drivers may be some of the cause.
Shibathedog @ Apr 17th 2007 3:47PM
This sucks, i was planning on upgrading my X1950PRO to Dual 8600GTS cards running in SLI. It seems like it wouldn't even be worth it now. I guess i have to wait for the 8600GTX or something.
o0adam0o @ Apr 17th 2007 4:22PM
Im glad i bought a used X1900gt and not spent money on these...after having my card for 3 months i realised i loose interest in gaming....i havent played a game in over a month. LOL
But im sure theres plenty of gamers out there that will put these cards to good use ;)
Todd @ Apr 17th 2007 6:25PM
I have a X1950pro and it's a pretty good card. Sure beats the 16mb TnT card that was in my previous computer! But like the above poster I got bored after a few months. I bought sid meier's Railroads and sim city 4 months ago but I still haven't played them.
JD @ Apr 17th 2007 8:41PM
In what cases was this card outperformed by an x1950pro? I've been looking, but haven't found anything......
Also, these cards are quiet.....unlike my friends x1950xt. That thing screams like an airplane.
Ken J @ Apr 17th 2007 10:30PM
Not to play fanboy or anything. I always prefer ATI over nVidia. nVidia may be a "benchmark queen", but it pisses me off when I'm shooting at people behind barriers that haven't been rendered because of the way nVidia's drivers handle clipping. I never had such problems with ATI cards. Too bad ATI makes shitty laptop GPU's...
Juaquin @ Apr 18th 2007 1:24AM
Wow. I had been waiting for the 8600GTS to come out for forever, but finally broke down and got the 8800GTS 320MB about a week ago (just installed last night). I'm glad I didn't hold out. I'm playing Supreme Commander on 1440x900, almost maxed out settings, at 35-60+ fps.
Sean @ Apr 18th 2007 5:34PM
This smacks of a repeat (albeit without the lawnmower and power suck) of the old FX series cards from nvidia. Insanely high clock speeds, but no efficiency and a pathetic 128bit memory pipe. The ATI/AMD hd 2600 cards are probably going to eat this for lunch. Hope they come out this century.