NVIDIA 8600 GT and GTS Released

NVIDIA today has announced the launch of three new graphic cards, the 8500GT, 8600GT, and 8600GTS, which range from $89 – $229, respectively. There are countless reviews around the web today.

NVIDIA’s new GeForce 8600 GTS and GT cards put up decent performance numbers throughout our suite of benchmarks, but they were outpaced in a number of situations by the Radeon X1950 Pro and GeForce 7950 GT. In 3DMark06 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. the 8600s performed on-par or better than the last-gen cards we tested. However, in virtually all of the other tests the new GeForce 8600 GTS and GT cards fell short of the mark set by its older mainstream counterparts. – Hot Hardware

The GeForce 8600 GTS has a 128-bit memory bus. But you know what? It did not hamper performance; in fact, our gameplay was faster than the 256-bit memory ATI Radeon X1950 Pro. The X1950 Pro’s memory runs at 1.38 GHz giving us 44 GB/sec of memory bandwidth. The GeForce 8600 GTS runs at 2 GHz giving us 32 GB/sec. That is 10 GB/sec less of memory bandwidth, yet, we have higher gaming performance! It is all in the architecture and the memory controller. We were able to run Flight Sim X at 4X AA and 16X AA at 1600×1200 which is very memory intensive, the GeForce 8600 GTS could do it with 10 GB/sec less of memory bandwidth available. – Hard|OCP

Perhaps I am too pampered by the high-end but it seems to me that other than DirectX 10 capability, the lower power requirements, new pure video feature, and heat output are the few redeeming qualities of the 8600 GTS cards. Sure, the 3DMark scores look great but when it comes down to performing well in games I just don’t feel that it’s a good deal when you look at current pricing of the 8800 GTS 320MB. They can be found for as little as $219 after mail-in-rebate and offers another world of performance over the 8600 GTS! – Legit Reviews

Other reviews can be found at techPowerUp!, TweakTown, Hexus, i4u, AnandTech, Legion Hardware, XS Reviews and Elite Bastards.