Review: DX10 for €150 makes 8600GTS run for its money
We had a chance to get one special Geforce 8600 GT card. The normal cards are clocked at 540 MHz core and 1400 MHz memory but this XXX card runs at 620 MHz core and 1600 MHz memory. The best part is that it costs only €150 and is available at press time.
The card comes in an extremely small box but don't be fooled,
it's a quite fast part. It has 32 Unified Shaders clocked at 1190 MHz and eight
ROPs. The only bad thing about the 8600GT / GTS generation is that the memory works
at 128 bit only.
Well let's forget about that for a second. XFX Geforce 8600 GT
XXX is the full name of the product we tested. The card comes with 256MB GDDR3
memory has 2x DVI ports, TV-out and is of course PCIe only. It supports SLI and
has a SLI connector on top of the card. The black PCB looks really nice and the
white cooler fits the design.
XFX made the DVI ports in green and it fits the design, on top of them you
will find a S-video out. Even the bracket is in black. The card doesn’t have
a PCIe 6 pin power connector and gets all its power from the PCIe slot.
The cooler is
efficient and quiet and it looks a lot like the 7600 GT cooler we seen on the
previous generation of the cards. It is not noisier than the cooler on a 8600
GTS, but this one doesn't cool the memory. The memory comes from Qimonda and we believe
that it works at 1.4 ns.
The package includes a driver CD (v. 101.02 XP), S-Video Cable, six pin to Molex
power cable and a DVI dongle. Of course the box comes with a manual. The card doesn't support HDCP but the new version of the card might support it.
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
We upgraded our benchmarking suite with Company of Heroes
and Oblivion is back again. We are also thinking about Stalker as well, as it has
a great graphics.
We included Gainward's 8600 GTS card, 8600 GTS and 8600GT at default
speeds and XFX's overclocked 8600GT XXX cards in the review.
|
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03 |
3DMark 03 |
Game2 |
Game3 |
Game4 |
|
Gainward 8600GTS 725/2200MHz |
18916 |
144.6 |
109.4 |
119.2 |
|
Nvidia 8600GTS 675/2000MHz |
17566 |
133.0 |
101.4 |
110.1 |
|
Nvidia 7600GT 560/1400MHz |
14364 |
94.9 |
85.3 |
86.4 |
|
Nvidia 8600GT 540/1400MHz |
14399 |
107.6 |
83.4 |
89.7 |
|
XFX 8600GT 620/1600MHz |
16309 |
123.3 |
94.5 |
102.2 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03 |
Single Texturinng |
Multi Textur. |
Vertex Shader |
Pixel Shader 2.0 |
|
Gainward 8600GTS 725/2200MHz |
2844.8 |
8015.4 |
63.5 |
249.6 |
|
Nvidia 8600GTS 675/2000MHz |
2638.5 |
7434.6 |
59.0 |
227.7 |
|
Nvidia 7600GT 560/1400MHz |
2364.4 |
6400.3 |
43.3 |
279.8 |
|
Nvidia 8600GT 540/1400MHz |
2110.6 |
6043.0 |
48.0 |
187.5 |
|
XFX 8600GT 620/1600MHz |
2420.7 |
6870.3 |
54.6 |
213.9 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05 |
3DMark 05 |
Game1 |
Game2 |
Game3 |
|
Gainward 8600GTS 725/2200MHz |
12354 |
52.0 |
38.9 |
59.7 |
|
Nvidia 8600GTS 675/2000MHz |
11407 |
48.0 |
36.1 |
54.9 |
|
Nvidia 7600GT 560/1400MHz |
6132 |
28.5 |
18.0 |
28.7 |
|
Nvidia 8600GT 540/1400MHz |
9317 |
39.2 |
29.5 |
44.7 |
|
XFX 8600GT 620/1600MHz |
10612 |
44.7 |
33.5 |
51.1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05 |
Single Texturinng |
Multi Textur. |
Pixel Shader |
VS/VS |
|
Gainward 8600GTS 725/2200MHz |
2904.9 |
8688.9 |
193.6 |
130.8/136.3 |
|
Nvidia 8600GTS 675/2000MHz |
2723.5 |
8094.5 |
179.5 |
117.2/123.9 |
|
Nvidia 7600GT 560/1400MHz |
2811.8 |
6648.9 |
168.7 |
51.3/37.2 |
|
Nvidia 8600GT 540/1400MHz |
2183.1 |
6607.0 |
146.9 |
98.7/100.0 |
|
XFX 8600GT 620/1600MHz |
2505.0 |
7507.8 |
167.2 |
112.7/113.5 |
XFX 8600GT 620/1600MHz card is 2000 points faster then the reference 8600 GT. Nvidia 8600GT 540/1400MHz is almost identical to Nvidia 7600GT 560/1400MHz at default clock. 8600 GTS at default clock is 1200 points faster and Gainward's overclocked card dominates.
In 3Dmark05 XFX
8600 GT card scores 1300 points faster then the reference 8600 card. XFX 8600
GT is more than 50 percent faster than the Nvidia 7600GT 560/1400MHz. XFX Geforce
8600 GT XXX is about thirteen percent faster then the reference 8600GT card.
|
Composite Figures 3Dmark 06 |
3DMark 06 |
|
|
|
|
Gainward 8600GTS 725/2200MHz |
5916 |
|
|
|
|
Nvidia 8600GTS 675/2000MHz |
5513 |
|
|
|
|
Nvidia 7600GT 560/1400MHz |
3314 |
|
|
|
|
Nvidia 8600GT 540/1400MHz |
4558 |
|
|
|
|
XFX 8600GT 620/1600MHz |
5114 |
|