Coverage sampled antialiasing performance
We've compared the basic performance of the GeForce 8600 series to its closet competition, but we haven't yet said too much about image quality and some of the G84 GPU's more intriguing features. That's in part because you can read about image quality and the like in my GeForce 8800 review. What you saw there from the high end GeForce 8, GeForce 7, and Radeon X1000 GPUs also applies to their lower end derivatives. I checked it out, and the GeForce 8600 cards appear to have the same angle-independent anisotropic filtering capabilities as the GeForce 8800.

But I do want to take a second to see how coverage-sampled antialiasing has translated to the G84. CSAA offers 16X image quality with very little performance drag. Here's a quick look at performance scaling with the various AA modes these GPUs offer.

The GeForce 8600 GTS delivers the same frame rates with 16X CSAA that the Radeon X1950 Pro does in its 6X AA mode, despite the fact that 16X CSAA achieves discernibly smoother edges.

Oh, and I'm not sure why the 8600 GT confounds expectations by being faster in 8xQ mode than in 16X CSAA. The GTS doesn't do that. I did re-test the GT several times, and the results didn't change.