Gigabyte 8600GTS 256MB Silent Pipe 3

[PAGETITLE=Introduction] [Top Ad] Whether or not you are looking to purchase a low-end, mid-range or high-end graphics card, the choices are endless. It certainly doesn't help when there are five-hundred different versions of a card available. Thanks to this, it's smart to read around to find out which card suits you best, since you could easily purchase a card that doesn't meet your expectations, or vice versa, paying more for a card that has power you will never touch. The card we are taking a look at today comes from Gigabyte, a company better known for creating feature-rich motherboards, one of which we took a look at last month and were impressed with. Like that P35C-DS3R board, today's graphics card is also a 'budget' mid-range offering, retailing for an average price of $180 at most popular e-tailers. This G86 card brings a lot to the table for gamers who don't want to spend too much money. The retail price of this card is made even better considering it includes a popular game that currently retails for $30. Of course, that value is nil if you already own the game. Given the chance that you do, though, I'd bet you already have a suitable graphics card and would have no need to read this review. Like the rest of NVIDIA's 8-series cards, this one offers DX10 support, although there is virtually no reason to purchase the card based on that reason alone. 7900GS cards offer very similar performance, lagging behind in very few tests, but can cost $30 - $40 less. DX10 is still in it's infancy and titles to fully support the technology are not common. The most recent offering, Lost Planet, has had many less-than-stellar reviews, so we are all still waiting for that killer-app to come along. Who should consider an 8600GTS card? Anyone who wants a solid gaming card, that's also silent. Because these cards run cooler than the 8800GTS/GTX, obviously, most graphic card companies are choosing to release them sans a fan. They will run a bit warmer this way, but the silence is usually preferred by most. That might lead you to believe that it would be a perfect HTPC card, but that would ultimately depend on the size of your case, since most passive coolers are far larger than those that include a fan. Below is a list of the primary features of Gigabyte's 8600GTS card, followed by a comparison to other 8-series cards. Feature Specification Brand and Model Gigabyte GV-NX86S256H (GeForce 8600GTS) Core Clock 675MHz Memory Clock 2000MHz Memory Size 256MB GDDR3 Memory Interface 128-Bit Max Resolution 2560x1600 3D APIs DirectX 10.0 OpenGL 2.0 Other Features Dual-Link DVI TV-Out SLI Capable Fanless GPU Cooler HDCP Ready Includes Supreme Commander 1 Year Limited Warranty GeForce 8800 Ultra GeForce 8800 GTX GeForce 8800 GTS GeForce 8600 GTS GeForce 8600 GT GeForce 8500 GT GeForce 8400 GS Core Clock (MHz) 612 575 500 675 540 450 450 Shader Clock (MHz) 1500 1350 1200 1450 1190 900 900 Memory Clock (MHz) 1080 900 800 1000 700 400 400 Memory Total 768MB 768MB 640MB / 320MB 256MB 256MB 256MB 256MB Memory Interface 384-bit 384-bit 320-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 64-bit Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 103.7 86.4 64 32 22.4 12.8 6.4 Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) 39.2 36.8 24 10.8 8.64 3.6 3.6 Unpacking The Card One area where I have to give Gigabyte kudos is for their packaging. While this doesn't matter much in most regards, it's great to look at and the product itself is well-secured inside, to assure you receive everything in great shape. The 8600GTS has a Supreme Commander inspired box. In fact, SupCom is the primary focus of attention here, which seems a little foolish from a marketing standpoint. Besides the card, a driver disc is included in addition to two VGA-to-DVI adapters and also a video-out box. Though a modest offering, the card looks like a monster thanks to it's bulky passive cooler. It's certainly ugly, but it has a specific job to do, where looks don't matter. The GPU core is located below the bottom left-hand side of the bulkiest part of the cooler, right beside the angle change. The core is covered with a copper heatsink with heat pipes that extend through the rest of the massive cooler and run up and around into the array of fins. There is another heat pipe that extends towards the top right-hand corner of the cooler as well. Towards the back end of the card, heat runs along all of the fins and meets it's ultimate death outside the back of your case. It's a solid cooler design, though it still seems bulkier than it should have to be. While the card looks enormous from the front, the back shows how modest it really is. The SLI bridge connector is protected by a small blue covering, a nice added touch. With introductions finally out of the way, we can put this card to the ultimate test... gaming benchmarks! [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Testing Methodology, 3D Mark 2006] [Top Ad] Regardless of what performance-related part we are reviewing, there are a few conditions that we meet prior to benchmarking: Clean OS installation (Only required applications/games/benchmarks are installed) Desktop and scrap files are cleaned up, including emptying of recycle bin/trash. No virus scanner or firewall is installed in our stand-alone installations. Internet is disabled prior to any testing. Computer has proper airflow and room temperature is 80°F or less. Below is all of the information regarding our testing machine. Links lead to our review of said product. Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 3.0GHz Motherboard: ASUS Blitz Formula Memory: OCZ 2GB NVIDIA PC2-7200 Video: Gigabyte 8600GTS 256MB (NVIDIA 162.18) Sound: Onboard HD Audio. Storage: Seagate 7200.10 320GB Power Supply: Corsair HX620W Etcetera: Windows XP Professional SP2, Antec P182 Cooling: Corsair Nautilus 500 Because video drivers are constantly improved, we always download the latest version from the respective manufacturers website. In this case, NVIDIA released new drivers for both XP and Vista towards the end of July, which we promptly installed before testing. 3D Mark 2006 is our only automated benchmark, which we choose to include simply because it's the most popular GPU benchmark available. Aside from that, we also include five games which each are played manually on three different resolutions. Because of variances in gameplay that can occur during manual play-throughs, results will not scale as they would when using a time demo. We choose to not include time demos because they rely more on the CPU than they do the GPU. FRAPS 2.90 is used for all FPS capturing due to it's proven accuracy. Because the 8600GTS is not a high-end product, the majority of consumers purchasing the card shouldn't expect to play games above 1280x1024 resolution, unless it's an older title. We've included 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 to show the stark declines in average FPS' and also to have a hearty chuckle. Lastly, we haven't reviewed many GPUs in the past, so we are comparing the 8600GTS to Sparkle's 8500GT card. Once we accrue more GPUs for review, our graphs will appear more robust. Futuremark 3D Mark 2006 Although 3D Mark's relevance on GPU performance is often disputed, it scales well with faster GPUs (and CPUs), which is why we choose to include it. It's a cheap and easy way to compare one or more graphic cards to one another. Note that one reason the 3D Marks are high as it is, is thanks to the fact that the QX6850 CPU is used for testing. By comparison, swapping the 8600GTS with an 8800GTX will push the score to 12,000 and beyond. The CPU itself is responsible for more than half the score. One thing is clear though, the 8600GTS has a lot more pushing power than the 8500GT. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Half-Life 2, Stalker, Supreme Commander] For Half-Life 2: Episode 1, I chose my favorite level, ep1_c17_02a. The level starts you off in a dimly lit hallway and you need to make it through to the roof where an airship is trying to gun you down. It's a fun level, and really shows off HDR. The game performed quite well up until 1600x1200, although some subtle flickering became evident throughout the level. At 1920x1200, it's even more common, despite still being 60+. Surprisingly though, 1920x1200 was still quite playable, and the downsides seen through the play through probably wouldn't be enough to keep people away, if that's the resolution they wanted to play with. STALKER In S.T.A.L.K.E.R., I chose a run-through with the thumb drive mission, which occurs near the beginning of the game. Through it, there are many people who die and you get to leave with a thumb drive. Does it get much better? There are few games that remain completely playable at lower average FPS... STALKER is not one of them. In fact, I have a difficult enough time killing people in this game with an 8800GTX, so getting down to 15FPS is a complete joke. The game ran fine at 1280x1024 on both cards, but anything higher should be avoided at all costs. Supreme Commander SupCom is yet another game that I could probably play better blindfolded, but man, is it pretty to look at. Considering this is the game included with the card, it could not have been left out. The level used is Finn's Revenge, which we have a saved game for. When loaded, it allows us about five minutes before the match ends, thanks to the huge army we've built up. While STALKER is a game that requires higher FPS to enjoy, SupCom ran surprisingly well even at 1920x1200. While 19FPS is nothing to brag about, it ran more than smooth enough for me to put up with it. If I were stuck with this card, I would run the game at that resolution without hesitation. I didn't experience any blatantly obvious lag at all. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=NFS: Carbon, Call of Duty 2] In our NFS: Carbon test, we played through the first normal race when choosing one through the Quick Race mode. Two choices of car are given, an upcoming Chevrolet Camaro and a Koenigsegg CCX. I think it's obvious which one I chose. Racing games are notorious for running sluggish with slow video cards, but...

Gigabyte 8600GTS 256MB Silent Pipe 3

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Rob Williams