A Look at the GeForce 8600GTS and 8600GT
PCI Express x16 graphics cardsChipset 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.
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