Review: Gainward BLISS GeForce 8600 GTS GS, 256MB GDDR3 

Gainward decided to make an overclocked Geforce 8600 GTS version. We already told you everything that you should know about the Geforce 8600 GTS.

Lets repeat one more time. Nvidia recomends 675 MHz speed for the G84 chip and the 128 bit memory works at 2000 MHz. The Shader units at this chips works at 1.5 GHz shaderclock.

Gainward decided to go for a bit more extreme side. It overclocked the card to 725 MHz a full 50 MHz faster then the recommended speed, while the memory works at an incredible 2200 MHz. Of course Gainward can not overcome the limitations of the 128 bit memory bus, but the card still works well in FSAA and Aniso settings due to its high memory clock. The card comes with 256 MB memory.

G84, Geforce 8600 series are the first sub $200 or €200 DirectX 10 cards to hit the market. The bad news is that even today there are no DirectX 10 games out, but you should better be prepared. ATI's competition is still at least one month away and until then Gainward has all the time in the world to make some DirectX 10 money.

The card itself doesn’t run hot at all. The new innovative cooler is quiet and it looks good in black. Gainward tweaked the reference design and made its PCB in red while the dual-slot cooler is black with a big and silent 72mm fan in the middle of the board.

Gainward BLISS GeForce 8600 GTS GS, 256MB GDDR3, 2x DVI, TV-out, PCIe (8460)

 
What's in the box

The box includes two DVI dongles, S-Video to RGBA cable and power connector 6 pin PCIe.  The card needs the additional power. You will also find Cyberlink DVD Power 2 go 5.5, power producer 3.2, power back 2.0 and media show 3.0, a manual and a driver CD.   

We used:

Intel Core 2 Duo 6800 Extreme edition
Nforce 680i EVGA board
Corsair Dominator TWIN2X1024-8500 at 5-5-5-15 at 1066 MHz
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Akasa EVO AK 922 Blue Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU's
Silverstone DA750W modular PSU

Let's start with 3Dmark03. Gainward's card is the fastest one and almost scores 19000 in 3Dmark03. The reference clocked card at 675 / 2000 MHz scores 17566 so more than 1300 points less then the fastest one. Gainward 8600 GTS is 4500 marks faster than the previous king of the mainstream 7600 GT, but only 2300 points faster than Sparkle's overclocked 7600 GT at 80 nanometre.

In 3Dmark05 Gainward's overclocked card scores around 900 points more than the default clocked 8600 GTS. It is great to compare this card to a 7600 GT as the 8600 GTS Bliss edition is more than twice as fast in this test. Even the new 7600 GT at 80 nanometre from Sparkle is left behind and the 8600 GTS, even at its default clock, scores much better.