8600 gts review

[TanisHalfElven]

Originally posted by: schneiderguy

Originally posted by: Moose1309

8600gt will follow the same trend as the 6600gt and the 7600gt - start at $200-250 and quickly drop to $100-150

yup, I bought a 7600gt one week after launch, it had already dropped from $210 at launch to $160 :Q

that was what ? more than a year ago. thats a really small drop.

edit. oh wait now i understand. cancel that above comment.

 

[secretanchitman]

hardwarezone has their G84 preview up. seems like it isnt too promising, since it is targeted for the mid-range people only.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=3&id=2231

also dailytech has their midrange 8 series article up too.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: Matt2

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
Or, it could be quite a card to be had for people with 7600GT and 6800GT etc once prices drops abit. Clearly it outperforms last gen midrange cards e.g 7600GT, X1650XT by quite abit and go neck to neck with 7900GT/X1950pro with premature driver. So IMo its not that bad, except i guess some of us were expecting much more.

*remembers the 6600GT days*

I'm not saying it wouldnt be a decent upgrade for those who depend on the midrange, I am simply saying that for $60 more you could have a vastly superior card with the same feature sets. That is also assuming the price for this card will be $199. Personally, I think $229 is a more likely price, especially right after launch.

Until prices normalize on the 8600 GTS, this cards performance is too wild for my taste, but Geforce 8 technology has been pretty interesting so far in how it behaves when it is scaled down a bit the 8800 GTS 320 to 640 was an interesting example.

At launch this is probably not the best deal compared to previous generation high end, and probably won't be until supplies of the X1950 and 7900 dwindle.

 

[Extelleron]

Performance on the 8600GTS really doesn't seem to great... this surprises me because while nVidia usually doesn't have the greatest high-end parts, over the last few years they have had superior mid-range parts than ATI. For the most part, the 7600GT and 6600GT edged out anything ATI had. I have a feeling this is going to change this generation. I highly doubt nVidia is going to really change anything with newer drivers... any improvements will likely be a few % at most. I can't be sure but I think the low bandwidth of the 128-bit bus is holding nVidia back. Even if the memory is clocked @ 1145MHz (2290 effective) nVidia is still giving the 8600GTS less bandwidth than the 7800GTX or other cards like the X1950 Pro. From what we've seen, the 8xxx architecture seems to like high amounts of memory (judging from how bad the 8800GTS 320 performs, even when other cards like the X1900XT 256MB perform pretty good in comparison to the 512MB parts) and probably likes memory bandwidth too.

 

[Pugnate]

I am looking at a mid range card for my sister's comp and this really needs to be priced at $175 for that performance. Anything more would be silly.

 

[BernardP]

According to the Daily Tech article, the 8600 GTS will fill the $199 to $229 price point, and the 8600 GT will sell for $149 to $159.

The HardwareZone review seems to show that the 8600GTS is bandwidth limited (128-bit bus). This should not be the case with the slower-clocked 8600GT.

After reading a number of previews, it appears the 8600GT could be fairly priced for its performance level, but the 8600GTS won't. It will be better to spend a bit more for the big performance increase available at the low-end of the 8800 series.

I am also interested to see these new cards compared to the current-gen midrange cards. Excluding DX10, will the 8600GT be worth the extra money over the 7600GT?

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: Moose1309

Originally posted by: Matt2
Where would an 8600 Ultra fit into the scheme of things?

It wouldn't, NV has dropped the Ultra name. Anyway, it only used to apply to the "ultra" high-end

You have 8600GTS for $199-$249 and then you have 8800GTS 320mb for $260 AR.

Personally, I think this card is a pretty bad choice for most people. Spend the extra $60 and get the 8800GTS 320mb which offers much better performance.

This is a perfect example of how being a tight wad can hurt you.

Wait a sec, keep it apples to apples. GTS didn't debut at "260 AR", more like what 300-350?

8600gt will follow the same trend as the 6600gt and the 7600gt - start at $200-250 and quickly drop to $100-150

You're sorely mistaken if you think the 8600GTS is going to drop under $200 anytime soon. ESPECIALLY if it beats out AMDs RV630XT.

7600GT dropped in price so fast because yields were excellent, it was small, it was simple and it was cheap to make.

Nvidia still has $400 million to recover from G80's development.

 

[yacoub]

I love how it can't even hang with the 7950GT in most of the benchmarks yet it's clocked like 40% higher and the RAM is almost double the speed. =P

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: yacoub
I love how it can't even hang with the 7950GT in most of the benchmarks yet it's clocked like 40% higher and the RAM is almost double the speed. =P

the 7950gt has a 256bit memory bus so it ends up having more memory bandwidth than the 8600gt even with the lower memory clocks

 

[theprodigalrebel]

Disappointing

 

[josh6079]

It's just a DX10 compliant 7900/7950 GT.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

After reading the leaked 3DMark scores and the final specs this was obvious. That's the point at which I began looking for a 8800GTS 320MB.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: josh6079
It's just a DX10 compliant 7900/7950 GT with superior IQ, lower power consumption and smaller.

fixed.



Now, im wondering. Will ATi finally be able to stop the nVIDIA juggernaut in the mid range with the RV630XT?

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: josh6079
It's just a DX10 compliant 7900/7950 GT with superior IQ, lower power consumption and smaller.

fixed.



Now, im wondering. Will ATi finally be able to stop the nVIDIA juggernaut in the mid range with the RV630XT?

Seeing how the 8600gts is not an overwhelming contender in terms of performance, that might be very likely, unless they screw it up again like the x1600xt.

 

[Avalon]

So how many shaders? 64?

 

[schneiderguy]

8600GTS gets to 1ghz core on air cooling :Q

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: josh6079
It's just a DX10 compliant 7900/7950 GT with superior IQ, lower power consumption and smaller.

fixed.

I don't care about power consumption and the fact that it's smaller when it only gives me as fast of frames as last generations mid-range.

Of course, the overclockability should be interesting. That's what makes or breaks some mid-range cards - whether or not they overclock well.

Originally posted by: schneiderguy
8600GTS gets to 1ghz core on air cooling :Q

Maybe they would have been able to get it higher if their card wasn't falling apart already:

Originally posted by: VR-Zone
These cards are wild beasts when it comes to overclocking... and the irony is that this 8600GTS arrived physically damaged in the first place, one SMD component knocked off and one SMD capacitor loose.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: Avalon
So how many shaders? 64?

Until Nvidia officially launches the card we are unsure, but that would be the assume extrapolation given what we know so far.

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: schneiderguy
8600GTS gets to 1ghz core on air cooling :Q

The downside of such high overclocks is that unlike a review article which only cares that its stable not durable, for an end user who needs the card to last until they buy their next card, clocking it that high may very well kill it within a few weeks.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: yacoub

Originally posted by: schneiderguy
8600GTS gets to 1ghz core on air cooling :Q

The downside of such high overclocks is that unlike a review article which only cares that its stable not durable, for an end user who needs the card to last until they buy their next card, clocking it that high may very well kill it within a few weeks.

That's why volt mods and the like are not for those who actually want to keep the card for a while. All those 7900GT users who were overclocking to 700/2000~ might have been happy then, but how many still have functioning cards?

 

[Cookie Monster]

Hmm, but 800mhz core on the G84 with stock volts, and stock cooling is impressive though.

 

[josh6079]

Hmm, but 800mhz core on the G84 with stock volts, and stock cooling is impressive though.

Maybe checkbox impressive. Overclocking the core does almost nothing if the card is bandwidth limited - which this card seems to be.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: josh6079

Hmm, but 800mhz core on the G84 with stock volts, and stock cooling is impressive though.

Maybe checkbox impressive. Overclocking the core does almost nothing if the card is bandwidth limited - which this card seems to be.

Proof?

From what i can see, it can be because

a) as you said bandwidth constrained
b) lack of ROP
c) lack of framebuffer (256mb)
d) a driver problem

Or its could be a mixture, and we wont know til people start testing the card in bandwidth limited scenarios, etc etc. The weird thing is that it was able to beat the 7900GT in a stencil shadow heavy game, riddick. But didnt in another stencil shadow heavy game and that was doom3.

Is FEAR or COH fillrate limited? or bandwidth? or both?

 

[josh6079]

Proof?

About what? That the 8600 is bandwidth limited?

Whether it is or not depends on the application it's running, but for most recent games with high resolution / high IQ the 128 bit bus is going to be one of the factors that chokes this card - no matter how high the core goes.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: josh6079

Hmm, but 800mhz core on the G84 with stock volts, and stock cooling is impressive though.

Maybe checkbox impressive. Overclocking the core does almost nothing if the card is bandwidth limited - which this card seems to be.

Proof?

From what i can see, it can be because

a) as you said bandwidth constrained
b) lack of ROP
c) lack of framebuffer (256mb)
d) a driver problem

Or its could be a mixture, and we wont know til people start testing the card in bandwidth limited scenarios, etc etc. The weird thing is that it was able to beat the 7900GT in a stencil shadow heavy game, riddick. But didnt in another stencil shadow heavy game and that was doom3.

Is FEAR or COH fillrate limited? or bandwidth? or both?

Riddick uses some heavy shaders also. My guess is it's more shader limited than stencil limited.