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A Look at the GeForce 8600GTS and 8600GT

PCI Express x16 graphics cards
Chipset GeForce 8600GTS, 256 MB, 128 bit

With the release of the GeForce 8600GTS/GT and 8500GT, NVIDIA can say they have a complete lineup of DirectX 10 solutions from top to bottom. The recently launched GeForce 8400 now completes that line up. The GeForce 8600 series is particularly interesting, since it's basically the only series with two SKUs (on the lower end) - the premium GTS and more affordable GT. The difference: clockspeed. The GeForce 8600GTS and GT share the same core with 32 stream processors, 256 MB memory with a 128 bit memory bus width. While the GeForce 8600GTS ran at 650 MHz core clock and 1 GHz (2 GHz effective) GDDR3 memory, the GeForce 8600GT must make do with 540 MHz core clock and 700 MHz (1.4 GHz effective) GDDR3 memory. That means the faster GTS has about 30 percent more fillrate and have access to around 30 percent more bandwidth.

The second difference is of course price. You can probably find the GeForce 8600GT costing about half the price of a GeForce 8600GTS. Currently, the average price of a GeForce 8600GT is around US$ 130, while the GeForce 8600GTS can cost upwards to US$ 250. The GeForce 8500GT usually can be found selling at around US$ 100, but it is significantly slower than the GeForce 8600GT. This makes the GeForce 8600GT a great bargain for gamers focused on price / performance, but with more limited budgets. In its price range, the GeForce 8600GTS/GT competes with NVIDIA's previous generation of cards, the GeForce 7900 which includes the bargain GeForce 7900GS, the premium GeForce 7950GT and the older GeForce 7900GT (if you can still find it). However, its biggest and hardest competitor is the Radeon X1950 Pro. Although its technically still a DirectX 9 card, the Radeon X1950 Pro supports using HDR with AA, offers comparable high quality anisotropic filtering, very good shader processing power and offer optional features such as video input. It also helps AMD / ATI have a much solid performance in Vista.

One trend that's pretty much constant when talking about graphics card is that you can have the performance of high end cards of previous generation in current mainstream parts. Is this also true for the GeForce 8600GTS/GT? Mostly. If you look at various previews and reviews of the GeForce 8600GTS/GT, you'll likely see most reviewers come to the same conclusion. The use of a 128 bit memory controller makes the GeForce 8600 series unable to surpass or even compete with 256 bit cards such as the GeForce 7900 series or Radeon X1950 Pro.

While unfortunate, this compromise allows NVIDIA and card manufacturers to offer the GeForce 8600 series at very affordable prices. If you look at various articles dissecting the GeForce 8600GTS/GT, you'll undoubtedly understand that these series is basically just one third of a GeForce 8800GTS, with a little bit of tweaking here and there. Simplifying and scaling the design brings cost reductions and the use of a 128 bit memory controller allows the use of fewer memory chips. Don't forget, its more likely memory prices will also come down with better yields and fabrication process.

Mainstream is the new low end

So, if performance is slower with AA, why bother with the GeForce 8600 series at all? Well, the GeForce 8600 series shares much of the characteristics that can be found on the GeForce 8800 series - pretty good shader performance, angle independent anisotropic filtering and of course, DirectX 10 support. Remember, most gamers don't actually play with all the settings maxed out, or enable AA and AF all the time. Most gamers actually opt for mainstream, budget cards able to provide high enough frame rates with their chosen settings. Usually, they let the game (or more appropriately, the developers) decide which settings to use. Mainstream gamers are also more likely to play at 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 960 / 1024. And true DirectX 10 games is still about a year away and early previews with Call of Juarez, Company of Heroes and Lost Planet are not particularly promising. The mainstream market is the market the GeForce 8600GTS/GT competes. If it is able to offer about the same performance but cost less, more budget constrained gamers who play less graphic demanding games will likely be more satisfied with it. Another plus for the GeForce 8600 series: power consumption. The GeForce 8600GT even make do without the 6 pin ATX power connector.

Image Quality Comparison

Before looking at the performance the GeForce 8600 GTS, we think its prudent to at least see what we're going to see in terms of image quality. We won't go into depth here, but generally we found the image quality is very close to the GeForce 8800 series. After all, the GeForce 8600 shares support for angle independent anisotropic filtering and newly revamped multi sampling and also support coverage sampling anti aliasing (CSAA).

Anisotropic Filtering & Anti Aliasing

Below you can find shots taken from SimBin's GTR2 - the same scene we used for our review of GeForce 8800GTS. For comparison reasons, we included shots from a GeForce 7950GT and Radeon X1950 Pro.

GeForce 8800GTS



GeForce 8600GTS/GT



GeForce 7950GT



Radeon X1950 Pro



These are 4x AA and 16x AF shots. Aside from the missing display panel and wiper, there's very little difference between the GeForce 8600 and 8800 shots. There are some subtle differences. On the lower part of the windshield, the GeForce 8800 shot does look less aliased, but it's hardly noticeable unless you look very closely. For a better comparison, let's look at  the same scene at 1280 x 1024.

GeForce 8800GTS @ 1280 x 1024



GeForce 8600GTS/GT @ 1280 x 1024



Virtually no difference. The wiper on the windshield does look slightly 'better' on the GeForce 8600 shots, but that's likely very subjective.

In a quick glance, there is practically no difference in image quality between the GeForce 8600 and GeForce 8800 series. The good news is that this means you can enjoy the same image quality at much affordable prices. Of course, there's still performance to be considered. What kind of frame rates can we expect with these kind settings? Undoubtedly, we can expect a difference in performance, but is the frame rates playable enough? Let's look at the performance of the GeForce 8600GTS and GT.

Performance

Graphical settings for these games are set to their highest possible values. The objective is of course to push these graphics cards to the limit. Notable differences are F.E.A.R where we disable "Soft Shadows", Quake 4 where we use High Quality - not Ultra Quality. Anisotropic filtering in Quake 4 was set to "1" for default tests and "16" for AA / AF tests. We used Serious Sam II built in "Maximum" quality preset then change resolution and AA / AF settings accordingly. All of these settings can be seen here. Our TES IV: Oblivion settings are as close as we can get to Ultra High Quality - you can see our test settings here. For Need for Speed: Carbon, we used the game's "Maximum" video quality preset, but change the filtering to "Trilinear" for default tests - AA AF tests are run with "4x" and "Anistropic". Since there is no timedemo in NFS: Carbon, we used the Sprint Race on Lincoln Boulevard for testing. Last, you can see the settings we used for GTR 2 here. Clear weather was used for our run of Monza GP tests.

We'd like to thank Tagan for supplying the additional power supply and Gigabyte for supplying both the Gigabyte P965-DS3P and Radeon X1950 Pro for this article. And of course, thanks to ASUS for lending us their EN8600GTS, EN8600GT and the EN7950GT. Price wise, these cards with the exception of the GeForce 8600GT is priced at the same level - US$ 200 - give or take a few dollars.

Our test setup
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 socket LGA-775 (running at 7 x 400 MHz)
4 x 512 MB A-DATA Vitesta 5-5-5-18 PC6400 DDR2-SDRAM
Gigabyte P965-DS3P Intel P965 motherboard
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9 80 GBs Serial ATA 8 MB buffer
LiteOn 1673S DVD-RW
Tagan TG530-U15 530 watts ATX/BTX power supply

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed
ATI Catalyst 7.3 reference driver
NVIDIA Forceware 93.71 reference driver (for the GeForce 7950GT)
NVIDIA Forceware 158.22 reference driver (for the GeForce 8600GTS / 8600GT)
Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility 8.1.0.1006
DirectX 9.0c
all respected games used for benchmarks have been updated to their latest,final builds.

The graphs are pretty self explanatory, but in case you can't see the text, they're arranged in groups of three colors: green for minimum fps,  blue for average fps and red for maximum fps. The first group of graphs are results taken with default settings - AA and AF is not enabled. The second group of results are results with 4x AA and 16x AF.

The results:

Right off the bat, we can see the GeForce 8600 series does not have what it takes to push this game at our test settings with AA and AF. Anti aliasing performance is definitely not one of the GeForce 8600 series strength. Now, if you look at results without AA and AF, the GeForce 8600GTS is actually slightly faster than the Radeon X1950 Pro at 1024 x 768. At 1280 x 960, none of the cards really have the performance to push frame rates above 30 fps all the time with AA and AF. But then again, all these cards are essentially budget cards. So, if you're planning to buy a GeForce 8600GTS / GT, you must choose between 1024 x 768 with AA and AF or 1280 x 960 / 1024 without AA (at least) and AF. If you chose not to run without AA and AF, even the GeForce 8600GT should be enough. It's slower but the frame rates are playable enough.

Obviously, NVIDIA have to make some compromises to the GeForce 8600 series. That compromise is AA performance - fillrate. Lets examine these scores a little to bit to see how much penalty incurred with AA and AF. First, let's take a look at the cost of angle independent anisotropic filtering. Please note that these results are different from the results used for the graph above. They are from different runs.

8600GTS

	1xAF (Trilinear)	2xAF	4xAF	8xAF	16xAF
1024
Min	63	62	62	62	56
Avg	119.95	120.31	120.29	117.5	114.88
Max	252	251	253	251	249
1280
Min	46	42	43	45	48
Avg	86.6	85.68	84.03	82.99	83.01
Max	171	174	169	170	169
1600
Min	29	25	27	26	27
Avg	58.45	58.48	58.25	56.51	56.66
Max	109	109	112	105	104

8600GT

	1xAF (Trilinear)	2xAF	4xAF	8xAF	16xAF
1024
Min	48	48	45	47	45
Avg	94.08	92.88	92.27	92.05	90.72
Max	199	196	196	195	192
1280
Min	38	34	32	37	37
Avg	66.63	66.35	65.28	65.48	65.18
Max	133	133	131	132	132
1600
Min	24	23	24	22	24
Avg	45.74	45.58	44.84	44.77	44.55
Max	86	86	83	82	82

Judging from these test results, anisotropic filtering penalty on the GeForce 8600 is minimal at worst and that's a good thing. Even at high resolutions, the cost is only about 3 to 4 percent drop in frame rates, for both the GeForce 8600GTS and 8600GT. You can actually push anisotropic filtering to the max, with high quality image settings and get some pretty decent frame rates. We can also see, these cards lost quite a bit of performance (25 to 33 percent) when you raise the resolution (both from 1024 x 768 to 1280 x 960 and from 1280 x 960 to 1600 x 1200). It will be interesting to see what kind penalty we can expect with anti aliasing.

8600GTS

	Without AA	2xAA	4xAA
1024
Min	63	47	29
Avg	119.54	88.3	64.44
Max	255	179	161
1280
Min	47	30	23
Avg	85.47	60.24	42.86
Max	171	119	100
1600
Min	29	20	17
Avg	57.95	40.91	28.55
Max	110	79	62

8600GT

	Without AA	2xAA	4xAA
1024
Min	48	35	26
Avg	94.51	66.36	50.35
Max	197	140	122
1280
Min	38	27	18
Avg	68.81	46.77	33.62
Max	132	93	77
1600
Min	23	15	12
Avg	44.4	31.25	22.21
Max	86	61	49

Even with the faster GeForce 8600GTS, the penalty of anti aliasing is pretty hefty - frame rates between 2x MSAA at 1024 x 768 and no AA at 1280 x 960 is about the same. This also apply to 4x MSAA at 1024 x 768 and running without AA at 1600 x 1200. Well, running at 1600 x 1200 without AA is actually slightly slower than 4x MSAA at 1024 x 768. Because of the performance penalty, AA is definitely a premium with these cards. Its fairly safe to say that the most optimal solution is to use 2x MSAA (with 16xAF) at 1024 x 768. If you have to use 1280 x 960 / 1024, you'll likely have to forgo using AA to keep frame rates high enough for fluid gameplay. In this respect, there's actually no reason to buy the faster GeForce 8600GTS over the 8600GT.


Quake 4 is slightly more 'forgiving' on the GeForce 8600 series. The GeForce 8600GTS is faster than the Radeon X1950 Pro without AA and AF and is only slower by a few frames with AA and AF enabled. The GeForce 8600GT is obviously slower than both cards, but it still provides high enough frame rates at 1024 x 768 with AA and AF. The extra premium you pay for the GeForce 8600GTS shows it value when we raise the resolution to 1280 x 1024 - the GeForce 8600GTS still manage to offer frame rates above 30 fps with AA and AF while the GeForce 8600GT does not. Of course, if you're planning to use 1600 x 1200 with these cards, best not to enable AA at all. Are they any good at 1600 x 1200 without AA and AF? The GeForce 8600GTS is faster than the Radeon X1950 Pro here, while the GeForce 8600GT is still able to offer high enough frame rates  - minimum frame rates remains above 30 fps.

With the GeForce 8600GTS, we were able to use 1280 x 1024 with 4x AA and 16x AF, while we're limited to 1024 x 768 with 4x AA and 16x AF with the GeForce 8600GT. Now, don't fret. Budget conscious gamers who opt for the GeForce 8600GT may still be able to get more out of their card. There's a possibility we can still have high enough frame rates on the 1280 x 1024 if we dropped down to 2x MSAA (and maintain 16xAF with minimal performance penalty).

8600GTS

	1xAF (Trilinear)	2xAF	4xAF	8xAF	16xAF
1024
Min	107	107	107	108	104
Avg	185.29	181.83	182.69	180.77	180.11
Max	260	251	235	238	252
1280
Min	69	70	66	68	68
Avg	126.65	125.71	125.4	122.78	124.74
Max	182	183	182	173	176
1600
Min	49	48	47	48	47
Avg	90.63	92.11	91.46	89.35	88.97
Max	137	140	135	137	136

8600GT

	1xAF (Trilinear)	2xAF	4xAF	8xAF	16xAF
1024
Min	84	84	83	82	88
Avg	149.67	150.23	149.48	146.08	148
Max	216	219	203	202	202
1280
Min	53	51	53	51	52
Avg	99.46	98.87	98.02	96.89	95.29
Max	152	149	146	147	145
1600
Min	36	39	34	35	36
Avg	72.34	71.75	71.07	70.03	69.76
Max	116	116	116	111	114

Performance penalty with anisotropic filtering is again minimal and only rises noticeably when we hit 1600 x 1200 on both cards. This is actually a big improvement from the previous generation. NVIDIA's previous generation of cards offer slightly worse filtering than the competition and now, they're able to offer minimal performance penalty, high quality anisotropic filtering on a budget SKU. Now you can have very high filtering quality and maintain reasonable frame rates at 1600 x 1200 with a US$ 130 GeForce 8600GT.

8600GTS

	Without AA	2xAA	4xAA
1024
Min	109	75	51
Avg	185.9	138.63	102.02
Max	269	198	168
1280
Min	70	47	33
Avg	127.21	88.63	65.92
Max	192	139	124
1600
Min	49	30	23
Avg	91.12	64.48	47.3
Max	138	110	100

8600GT

	Without AA	2xAA	4xAA
1024
Min	87	56	36
Avg	151.53	108.17	75.43
Max	228	167	137
1280
Min	52	41	22
Avg	100.1	68.45	48.44
Max	153	118	102
1600
Min	36	25	16
Avg	71.03	48.78	33.21
Max	120	89	75

4x MSAA is definitely too much for the GeForce 8600GT - the card is about a third slower on average than the GeForce 8600GTS.  As we suspected, you can actually get away with 2x MSAA at 1280 x 1024 with the GeForce 8600GT. Yes, it's no 4x MSAA, but its better than no AA at all and do remember the GeForce 8600GTS is being sold at around US$ 250. Although the GeForce 8600GT has lower average fps than its faster sibling, you actually get about the same level of minimum frame rates (41 to 47 fps). After all, in real gameplay, Quake 4 frame rates are capped at 60 fps.


Much like Quake 4, Serious Sam II doesn't push these graphics cards very hard like F.E.A.R. We can see both the GeForce 8600GTS and GT still manage to deliver high enough frame rates at 1024 x 768 with AA and AF. At 1280 x 960, the GeForce 8600GTS is better because it doesn't dip below 30 fps. At 1600 x 1200. you'll likely have to forgo AA alltogether on both cards. So, the difference between the two card is this - if you really need 1280 x 1024 (or 1440 x 900 - both of which is the native resolutions of many budget LCDs these days), you'll likely be more satisfied with the GeForce 8600GTS. If you're still using 1024 x 768, the GeForce 8600GT is actually a better buy. It's fast enough at that resolution and is being sold at about half the price of a GeForce 8600GTS. Now, let's see a break down of the frame rates to confirm the trend we saw on the other two games.

8600GTS

	1xAF (Trilinear)	2xAF	4xAF	8xAF	16xAF
1024
Min	77	77	74	73	70
Avg	87.9	87.19	84	81.92	80.35
Max	108	106	102	99	96
1280
Min	56	56	54	52	52
Avg	64.59	64.23	61.88	60.2	59.14
Max	79	76	72	72	70
1600
Min	40	40	39	37	37
Avg	45.54	45.12	43.69	42.46	41.7
Max	56	55	53	51	49

8600GT

	1xAF (Trilinear)	2xAF	4xAF	8xAF	16xAF
1024
Min	63	62	60	58	57
Avg	71.78	71.07	68.48	66.79	65.62
Max	89	85	82	80	78
1280
Min	46	45	44	43	42
Avg	52.76	52.16	50.15	49.07	48
Max	65	63	60	58	57
1600
Min	32	32	31	30	29
Avg	37.13	36.6	35.37	34.44	33.67
Max	46	45	43	42	41

Though the results does show anisoftropic filtering still incurs noticeably lower frame rates, the penalty is (still) minimal at lower resolutions where you likely will be using these cards (1024 x 768 and 1280 x 960 / 1024). The only difference worth mentioning seems to be the GeForce 8600GTS is still fast enough to deliver high enough frame rates (above 30 fps) at 1600 x 1200, a resolution that certainly is not really enjoyable on the GeForce 8600GT. This is different to what we saw in Quake 4 earlier.

8600GTS

	Without AA	2xAA	4xAA
1024
Min	76	64	54
Avg	87.34	75.87	65.66
Max	107	94	85
1280
Min	56	47	39
Avg	64.5	55.16	47.11
Max	79	68	62
1600
Min	39	33	27
Avg	45.5	38.52	32.83
Max	56	48	43

8600GT

	Without AA	2xAA	4xAA
1024
Min	62	51	41
Avg	72.01	59.34	49.07
Max	87	74	65
1280
Min	46	36	29
Avg	52.85	43	35.22
Max	65	54	47
1600
Min	32	25	20
Avg	37.15	29.96	24.02
Max	45	38	32

The results above seem to show another plus for choosing the GeForce 8600GTS. You can actually get away with 2x MSAA (and 16xAF) at 1600 x 1200 or 4x MSAA at 1280 x 960 with the card. However, we also need to remind you, that if you're willing to spend more than US$ 200 on a graphics card, you probably should be thinking about buying the GeForce 7950GT, the Radeon X1950 Pro or perhaps even the GeForce 8800GTS 320 MB instead.


It's clear that among the GeForce 8600 series does not have what it takes to push Oblivion with Ultra High Quality settings. The faster GeForce 8600GTS barely manage to push frame rates above 30 fps at 1024 x 768 without AA and AF. Obviously its slower sibling, the GeForce 8600GT fares worse. One interesting fact is that the GeForce 8600GTS is actually faster than the GeForce 7950GT with AA and AF enabled. Of course, that could be normal variations between runs, though we doubt it.


A more 'traditional' game, both GeForce 8600GTS and GT have enough processing power to push this game up to 1600 x 1200 if you run without AA. Enable AA and your resolution of choice is quickly limited to 1024 x 768 on the GeForce 8600GT and 1280 x 1024 on the GeForce 8600GTS. These seems to be the trend with the GeForce 8600 series of cards. Both cards are basically obliterated by older high end cards like the GeForce 7950GT or a more powerful mid end card like the Radeon X1950 Pro.


And last, NFS: Carbon. The unified shader architecture of the GeForce 8 series and higher core / shader clock on the GeForce 8600GTS allow it to offer higher frame rates than both the GeForce 8600GT and GeForce 7950GT. However, it's still no match for the Radeon X1950 Pro, which don't lose much performance with AA and AF at 1024 x 768. This illustrates one point - a mainstream / low end DirectX 10 is likely slower than a mid end DirectX 9 card - another trend we also see through the course of testing for this article.

HDR Performance

OK. We saw that anti aliasing is a big no-no on the GeForce 8600 series. That is actually in NVIDIA's favor. More and more games coming out these days still does not allow HDR rendering and MSAA to be used at the same time. Even with Oblivion we have to resort to driver 'hacks' to allow HDR and AA. How do these GeForce 8600 series cards handle HDR and HDR with AA? We re-ran the Serious Sam II Greendale demo, but this time with HDR rendering enabled.

Serious Sam II - Greendale

High Dynamic Range Rendering, 4xAA 16xAF

	1024 x 768	1280 x 960	1600 x 1200
GeForce 8600GTS
Mininum fps	40	31	21
Average fps	49.23	38.22	26.35
Maximum fps	63	50	35
GeForce 8600GT
Mininum fps	33	23	16
Average fps	40.77	28.99	19.89
Maximum fps	54	39	27
Radeon X1950 Pro
Mininum fps	34	27	18
Average fps	47.07	36.9	24.47
Maximum fps	63	50	34

Hmm, surprisingly good. Remember, 4x MSAA is basically limited to 1024 x 768 with the GeForce 8600 series and it would seem both cards manage just fine at that resolution. In fact, if you look at the numbers, the GeForce 8600GTS still offers playable frame rates at 1280 x 960 with HDR and 4x MSAA and 16x AF, better than the Radeon X1950 Pro (which dips below 30 fps but maintain about the same average fps. The performance penalty of HDR rendering seems to be around 20 percent. What if we emphasis on straight HDR rendering and 16xAF?

8600GTS

	1xAF (Trilinear)	2xAF	4xAF	8xAF	16xAF
1024
Min	70	69	68	66	65
Avg	81.32	81.16	78.77	76.79	75.5
Max	101	99	95	92	90
1280
Min	50	50	48	48	42
Avg	59.13	58.48	56.72	55.33	54.11
Max	73	72	69	66	65
1600
Min	35	34	34	34	32
Avg	41.18	40.64	39.49	38.66	37.81
Max	51	51	48	47	46

8600GT

	1xAF (Trilinear)	2xAF	4xAF	8xAF	16xAF
1024
Min	54	54	53	52	51
Avg	64.13	63.42	61.4	60.44	59.08
Max	80	79	75	73	71
1280
Min	39	39	37	37	37
Avg	46.37	45.94	44.34	43.38	42.8
Max	59	58	55	54	52
1600
Min	27	27	26	26	25
Avg	32.23	31.89	30.9	30.26	29.56
Max	42	40	39	38	36

The faster GeForce 8600GTS understandly fares better than its slower sibling. You can actually have playable frame rates up to 1600 x 1200 with HDR and 16x AF with the GeForce 8600GTS. That doesn't mean the GeForce 8600GT is a slouch. You can push it to 1280 x 960 / 1024 with HDR and 16x AF and have very playable frame rates. Not bad for a card that cost about half the price of a GeForce 8600GTS. However, we must also note that the same behaviour does not apply to all HDR enabled games. For example, Oblivion is still too much for the GeForce 8600 series with HDR. Its pretty likely the card must have high enough frame rates first when running at default (no HDR), typically 20 percent above average and minimum playable frame rates (typically 36 and 45 fps) so that it will still be playable with HDR enabled. 

Conclusion:

When we initially ran the benchmarks, we were more than a little bit disappointed with the GeForce 8600GTS and GT. After all, coming from such higly regarded pedigree like the GeForce 8800 series, we expect much better performance. Anti aliasing is not the GeForce 8600 series forte. While the card can still provide high enough frame rates with 4x anti aliasing at 1024 x 768 with some games, it's not able to do so with newer games or shader laden games like F.E.A.R, Oblivion and Need for Speed: Carbon. So, it's unable to compete in that settings with the GeForce 7950GT and Radeon X1950 Pro. Turning down AA to 2x does push frame rates a bit, but that comes at a price - image quality. Thankfully, NVIDIA in their right mind choose not to comrpomise on anisotropic filtering. Even with a budget card, you can still enjoy pretty much penalty free, high quality angle independent anisotropic filtering.

If we were to 'push' AA and AF as the only setting for performance metric, the GeForce 8600GTS and GT is certainly no competitor to the GeForce 7950GT and Radeon X1950 Pro. Take anti aliasing out and you get a more affordable offering high enough frame rates, even excelling when HDR comes into play. Of course, this is not a general rule. To get high enough frame rates with HDR, you first have to have very high frame rates without HDR. HDR's performance penalty is about the same as 2x AA, so if the game doesn't support HDR, you can always turn on 2x AA. Is this ideal? Hell no in our opinion, but it's better than no AA at all.

With that in mind, is the GeForce 8600GTS worth the price? We think not - you can easily buy the Radeon X1950 Pro that support many of the same features except DirectX 10 support. The Radeon X1950 Pro is also very likely better suited for newer crop of games, though just like the GeForce 8600GTS (and GeForce 7950GT), it's limited to 1024 x 768 with 4x AA and 16x AF not to mention It also sells for less. However, that's not true for the GeForce 8600GT. Although slower, in most cases its still fast enough to provide playable frame rates - particularly for older games like F.E.A.R, Quake 4 and Serious Sam II or less graphically demanding games like GTR2. Naturally, it also stumbles on newer games like Oblivion and NFS:Carbon but remember, it sells for about the price of a GeForce 8600GTS and still lower the price of a Radeon X1950 Pro. The compromise is a bit easier to swallow, but that's the price you pay with a budget, mainstream card.

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