Received my Sparkle 8600GT today. Well, company sent me a Sparkle 8600GTS by mistake, so I've paid the equivalent of $122 for the better model :)

(admittedly Sparkle's packaging is identical apart from the 'S' for both models, so I bet that this mistake will be made quite a bit)

Nice review. I'll hold onto this 7800GT for a bit longer.

Why not a 192 bit bus coupled with 378MB ram for the 8600 series? The 8800 series are already using 10 or 12 memory modules with 32 bits each, so it should be no problem using these bus widths. It would increase cost, but the performance gap would be much smaller to the 8800 series. I guess a model with 48 shaders would make sense aswell, though the 24 texture ops per clock might be overkill.

This was not what I expected. Maybe I will wait for the Radeons or the next versions from NVidia.

wow, interesting benchmarks... i must say. For me the X1950 Pro seems more preferable right now tho (as i have a 24" LCD with 1920x1200 res) as it seems to scale better with higher resolutions. But when the 8600GTS won... it won (like in STALKER).

On that note, Bring Back the Ultra! I've said it before, and i'll say it again. The 8600GTS should ACTUALLY be called the 8600GTS Ultra, and the 8600GT should just plain called a 8600. Same thing goes for ATI/AMD. We can have "Pro" and non-Pro cards... like back in the 9700/9800 days.... ah yes... the good ol' days. That and it would simplify things too... think about it. The 8800GTS is the lower end versions of the 88's, but in the 86 series GTS denotes that it is the higher of the two... seriously, someone needs to rethink their marketing schemes.

If the new series low and mid-range Radeons can't beat those limp performance figures they are in serious trouble.
Why is it by the way that whenever we get a test of NVidia graphics cards its always with "oh heck lets just go with it" overclocked cards rather than the original factory specs?
I don't recall ever seeing a new Radeon card overclocked above standard specs debuting here.
I imagine the disclaimers would be in CAPITAL letters if it was....

Scott sounds burnt out.

This is a nice review. The power consumption and acoustic tests are valuable in and of themselves - I was miffed that Anand did not include the same but that's why I love TR's quality articles rather than something rushed to be published.

However, I don't think the cards chosen as competitors reflect the real world landscape. The x1950xt for $210-$250 is going to be the natural competitor to the 8600GTS and it's just too bad that it wasn't included. The x1950pro and 7900GS will be the natural competitors to the 8600GT and the 7600GT and x1600XT will spar with the 8500GT.

So I think the article does a great job comparing one generation to the next but doesn't do much to accurately portray the current competitive landscape of the video card market.

Still, great article, great pictures as always, and overall a pretty fine submission by Nvidia although all judgements must be withheld until the R6xx series finally staggers onto the scene. Geez DAAMIT.

Edited for spelling

Excellent review. These are always entertaining and informative. Heck, I didn't even realize I stayed up 'till a quarter after 1:00 reading it. :-o

How does the G84 fold?

Also, this part of the conclusion is somewhat awkwardly phrased:

Nevertheless, this card so decisively outperformed the two DX9 cards that there's no doubt the $149 stock-clocked version of the 8600 GT is the best option at $149.

I'm suprised at how well the X1650XT performed. I'm guessing driver issues are holding the 7### cards back.

Any chance of getting some hi-def video playback tests? Those charts floating around the web of 5% CPU usage with an 8600 versus 50% usage with an 8800 are certainly interesting, and I'd like to see the results from a more credible source.

Scott. I appreciate all the hard work by you and your team in a very short period of time.

However, you need to do a follow-up article on the video-processing capability of the G84 and G86 as soon as practically possible. Significantly enhanced over the internal video processing of ANY rival silicon, including the 8800-family. The G84 in particular seems to be an ideal fit for a HTPC since it is fully HDCP-compliant and requires far less processing power (and heat/noise) from the CPU.

Maybe it's just me, but I think it would have been nice to throw in an 8800GTS 320MB card in there to see how much of a performace difference there is between the 8600GTS and a low end 8800 card.

"I DON'T ACTUALLY have to write these reviews, you know. If I get enough caffeine into my bloodstream, letters begin to swim across the page, form into words, and a stream of trenchant observations interlaced with bad jokes just kind of assembles itself in front of me."

So you're like the guy in Heroes who gets high then paints the future?

Things to remember...
1 Rhese prices will fall very soon so we can expect the gts wi;; fall well below 199 as amd cards pop up.
2 a 256 bit version would likely have used 700-800 mgz mem.. this uses 1 ghz to 1.2 thus the bandwidth drop isnt that bad. At least with the nvidia cards the core and shader are running FASTER then the 8800 and the mem is around same speed just 1/3rd as wide. The ati cards.. we are talking a jump from512 bit 1.4 ghz mem all the way down to 128 bit 1 or so ghz ram...

FINALY...if you have a 1950 or 7900 why in flaming lederhosen did you expect a nidrange card this early to compare? The 8700 MIGHT do the job when it comes but to expect an 8600 to is silly.

The 8600 is perfect for the 1280/ crowd who dont play the most demanding games at highest res and aa. To expect more then that is frankly being spoiled.

Link on CSAA Performance page to the initial explanation of it is broken, looks like a copy/paste fumble.

This chip cries for a passive cooled GS version. :).

So, when can us non-gaming desktopers and HTPC folk get:

1. A DX10 card for vista
2. Enough horsepower to decode 1080p video onboard
3. HDMI and HDCP out
4. Passive cooling
5. Budget price.
6. Preferably avialable in both PCIe and AGP flavours

Well?

Nice of Nvidia to give ATI a window of opportunity. The question is does ATI bite the bullet and produce a midrange $200 card with 256bit memory interface.

If I was buying today, on a budget (~$150 I would get the X1950pro, ~$200 it would be the x1950xt, and ~$300 the 8800GTS 320MB).

The 8600GTS would not figure into the decision. In the future who can say.

I am hoping for 256bit interface ATI for $200, which will invoke a response from Nvidia, either their own 256bit interfacer 8700 or agressive pricing on the 8800 GTS.

Either way it would be a win for consumers. The question is what will ATI deliver at the $200 mark in the next generation.

Nice review. I agree that the 8800 GTS 320MB is a better value if you're looking for a DX10 card. No contest.

LOL @ typing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ;) To make it easier, just type STALKER first, then go back and speed dot it with a dot/right arrow combo. Tada!

On a side note... it's concerning when a benchmark numbers don't reflect actual usage performance...

"
When is getting the best frame rate not a win? When the card doesn't run the game very well. FRAPS didn't seem to catch it, but all of the Nvidia cards we tested had performance issues in Oblivion. The game would hesitate momentarily as we walked through the vegetation, seemingly at each point where there was a level-of-detail change. This game uses an awful lot of dynamic LOD scaling, so that means lots of quick pauses and hiccups. The GeForce 8600s have the shader performance to suffer from this issue and still produce good frame rate numbers, probably due in part to their ability to dedicate lots of computing power to vertex processing in this crazy-detailed area.
"

Oh boy...

That's all well and good, but $149 for a graphics card is kind of steep. What is Apple going to put into its dual-Xeon Mac Pro?

That's just too damn funny... and painfully close to the truth.

Seems to me that the transistor price these guys are paying to get DX10 support is pretty tremendous. 289 million transistors is about the same number as the G71 (7900 GTX). I think when you consider the economics of board production, integration of DX10 features, and NV trying to get as much performance as possible out of the situation... the 8600 GTS isn't so bad.

While it certainly won't blow your hair back (which doesn't apply to me because I am bald and shave my head), I think NV walked the tightrope here. ATI has a window of opportunity where it may take the performance lead here with their HD 2600 (65 nm, greater transistor budget) but quite a bit of it will be determined by if they use a 256 bit bus or 128 bit bus. I honestly don't know which way ATI/AMD will go here, as decreasing the the overall cost of the board by 15% by using less memory chips and a 128 bit bus will result in major savings over the lifespan of the product. OEMs and manufacturers like the sound of that...

I am not disappointed by the 8600, as it does provide a lot of features and value. But the bottom line will be a user's happiness when they play the games at the resolution and quality settings they want. So we really don't know the true measure of the 8600 until we see the competition, its performance, and what prices we can expect.

So basically ATI's cheaper X1950 Pro beats the 8600GTS even tho the test results were with a considerably overclocked version?

Besides the not-mind-blowing performance, the biggest problem with these cards is that their DirectX 10 support is irrelevant for anyone who doesn't feel like upgrading to Vista.

Nice review, though the performance of these cards is pretty underwhelming. I got a Geforce 7900GS for $145 way back in August, and it holds its own against these cards, not to mention that the cheapest Radeon x1950 Pro on Newegg is $135 after a $20 MIR.

I am in the market for a new video card so that I can play the latest and greatest games that are out now, and those that will be coming out in the next 12 to 18months.

I was at one point considering the 7900GS, but it now just looks too slow, and I was hoping the 86xx series would be significantly faster than the 1950 pro, and it just isn't.

So whilst no one likes to pay more than what they may have originally set themselves as their "budget", on a bang for buck basis, the 8800 GTS 320 is miles ahead of the 86xx series and will be what I end up getting, so that 6 months down the track I am not cursing myself for having an underpowered card.

The 86xx series is the successor to the 7600GS, and I sure as hell wouldn't have bought one of them either.

So looking at this, I guess it's not really worth it to replace my 7900GS at this time. Not a large enough boost in performance. Good review though.

PLEASE turn off sub-pixel anti-aliasing when taking screenshots for the graphs. It looks absolutely horrendous.

Must.......resist.....temptation......to.....buy, must...wait....for.....R600.....benchmarks.

Nice review, Scott. We appreciate the sacrifice of sleep and coffee consumption you pulled to get this out to us. ^_^

Can't say I'm blown away by nv's midrange this generation (although performing on par with last generation's high end -and doing so with better IQ than GeForce 7 series - is nothing to scoff at).

The X1950 Pro looks to be a better purchase than the GTS, perhaps the GT might be a dark horse overclocker, but I'm afraid it might be crippled by lack of external power. The 8600 series does have something of a power consumption edge over the Radeon, but again, the difference is not huge.

I'll wait for prices to drop or ati's midrange to come out, something makes me think there will be a connection between the two :p.