Hi all,

I'm planning to get a new video card and I was looking at the Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GT and it looks like a reasonable price since its a Directx 10 card with pretty good specifications. If you guys own this card or previously, is this card good for gaming or what? Or should I get something better thats not over $250 (Australian dollars) or what?

I hope to see your opinions and feedback.

Could help us to tell what kind of screen you are using, it would be over kill to use a 8600GT on a 15" TFT screen for example . Other then that, up to 1280*1024 and 4xAA it will do most games without complaining.

From what I have seen and read, these cards only have a 128bit memory interface, which may slow them on some apps,games, etc.

I'm currently using a Samsung 17" LCD monitor, which I think should be fine.

Well, I would go for the 8600GT, the 128bit MEM-bus doesn’t say so much these days, the bandwidth is more important: We are talking about GDDR3 with 1.1 to 1.4GHz clock. And the new cards have more shaders as well, with more instructions. I would say that these cards perform well for there price, also most people have 17" or 19" screens with a 1280*1024 resolution.

Comparing a 8600GT and 8800GTS on Nvidia site you can actualy see how the 8800 has almost triple the statistics with an almost tirple memory interface. And AFAIK the price is around 50% more. Personnaly I would incline for the 8800
But again to actualy enjoy the 8800 facility you have to accomodate it with CPU and RAM. Don't do like I did buying a state of the art Gf 4 Ti4400 on a Xp 1600+ and 256 Ram.

Thanks for your replies, people.

Another question, is it best to get a video card with a fan or a silent pipe? Which one works better?

FAN. always a fan. the silent ones are if you want it to be silent, but you still need proper airflow over the heatsink.

Yes... but does that mean triple the performance?

On paper it looks real nice, in real life it could just be a 50% boost. Need some benches.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1086&pageID=3334

Just wanted to inform I got the Gigabyte 8600 GT for my Shuttle only two days ago and so far I am very pleased with it.

PROS:
It handles Oblivion on 'Ultra High' @ 1280x1024 very well, RoboBlitz (Unreal 3 Engine) also runs excellent at this resolution. It fits in the Shuttle with no difficulty and temperatures are pretty good, seems to swing from about 55C up to 70C after prolonged gaming. Taking the case cover off only reduces temps by 1 or 2C for the most part. Never have to worry about the bearings in a fan wearing out and the card subsequently dying.

CONS:
I also tested this card in Vista but was disappointed by the approx 20% loss of fps in CS:S and the blurring of colors that reminded me of watercolor paintings. The PureVideo HD included with the latest Vista drivers requires the installation of a 3rd party decoder, such as PowerDVD to function, however I could not get hardware acceleration for mkv's containing x264 video.

THOUGHTS:
nVidia is supposed to release a new driver for XP, which adds PureVideo HD support. Vista drivers should continue to improve.

That's a purdy video card... I'd want it.

The benchmarks that ripken posted seem to show almost double the performance boost to go along with the 50% price. The real question is do you need it? You've always got to look at what's the best for your price point, not what's the best value for the money. Otherwise, you'll end up spending a rediculous amount of money.

So if I compare the ATI Radeon 1950 Pro to the NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT, which was has better performance? Both cards are nearly the same (Except the 1950 Pro is a 256 bit and the 8600 GT is a 128 bit) comparing the bit, would that make much of a difference?

I think it depends on what resolution your gaming at, and how much certain features like DirectX 10, PureVideo HD / AVIVIO, power draw and noise matter to you. I dont think the larger memory bandwidth really helps unless you game at larger resolutions and use AA. I am not sure of how much of a price difference there is now though.

I've found some benchmarks comparing the 8600 GT to the X1950 Pro, just remember that the Gigabyte model comes a bit overclocked.
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?ca...3&card2=466
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2114753,00.asp

I also learned that the Gigabyte comes with V-Tuner3, an overclocking utility. PIC:

The 8800GTS also has three times the stream processors so it needs the additional memory bandwidth. The way they've optimized their memory crossbar technology over the years, 128-bit memory interface is fine for the 32 stream processors the 8600GT has. Would 256-bit help? I'm sure it would, but probably not as much as you might think.

Depending on what resolution you are gaming at it might be wasted "horsepower", like running a v12 while driving 30mph. Its also almost triple the price. In fact if you look at that 3DMark06 chart @ Bjorn the 8800 GTS has 1.5X the performance, but at current prices costs 2.5X as much.

cheapest 8600 GT $110
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....1921+1067928607

cheapest 8800 GTS $270
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....1921+1067924922

I prefer to buy towards the "value" end and upgrade more often

BTW some 3dmarks from my card:
GPU @ Default (600MHz), FSB @ 220MHz - 13867 3DMarks (03)
http://service.futuremark.com/orb/resultan...amp;UID=9716604
GPU @ Default (600MHz), FSB @ 220MHz - 8602 3DMarks (05)
http://service.futuremark.com/orb/resultan...amp;UID=9716838
GPU @ Default (600MHz), FSB @ 220MHz - 4301 3DMarks (06)
http://service.futuremark.com/orb/resultan...amp;UID=9717463