GeForce 8600 GTS Review: Affordable Single-Card Gaming Solution

Even though the GeForce 8600 GTS's 256MB are supposed to provide you with the best in 3D gaming and HD playback, all we can say is that we were disappointed with how the card compares with others out there. For the $200 you spend on the GeForce 8600 GTS, you could have an ATI Radeon, or, for a bit more, the GeForce 8800 GTS, which is much faster. Settling for the GeForce 8600 GTS is a mistake in my opinion, unless you just don't have a few more bucks for a better GeForce, or the patience to wait on the ATIs.

Although it's not as fast as the 8800, the GeForce 8600 GTS was designed along the same lines. It's next-gen, meant to deal with the load of DirectX 10 graphics, a gaming design for Windows Vista and 7. The 256MB of DDR3 memory is typical of cards under $300. Its speed is 1000MHz, 675MHz at the core. Although the speed itself is faster than the 8800, the memory is a lot less and the GeForce 8600 GTS has less pipelines coming to it- 32 on the 8600 vs. 96 on the 8800.

Although the fact that it takes only one expansion slot is good, the GeForce 8600 GTS requires a connection to your power supply unit (PSU), which means you need to make sure you have sufficient power to sustain an expansion. For one card, 350 W is recommended, which is pretty standard, but two GeForce 8600 GTS cards in SLI mode require 450 W. The good news is that, if you don't have that much wattage in your PSU, most Nvidia board members supply adapter cables.

The GeForce 8600 GTS's PureVideo HD 2.0 technology really impressed us, unlike the original version, and it's something many of the 8600's competitors don't have. The main improvement with the new PureVideo HD is that it maintains image detail in the shadows. With this technology, the GeForce 8600 GTS lets you approach the quality provided by an HDTV/Blu-ray player combo.

However, we still don't think Nvidia's HD output will best that of ATI's new cards. The deal is that ATI plans to add an audio chip to their cards. That way, if your card has built-in HDMI and your motherboard is equipped with HD audio, you won't more than one output. Since the GeForce 8600 GTS has just two DVIs, it isn't meant for audio output, but other 8600 GTS cards will probably have HDMI. Then, they'll be at the level ATI means to leave behind, where you have to patch audio from your PC's audio chip, and that will make ATI a step ahead.

We recommend the GeForce 8600 GTS for those who will do more HD movies than games and don't care for waiting for the next set of ATIs. Gamers ought to go for the 8800 3D cards. All who can, however, should wait a couple of weeks to see what ATI will come out with. We definitely can't wait to see what they'll present.