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Although we're still waiting for the first DirectX 10 game to arrive, the desire to futureproof is widespread, especially since games like Crysis look stunning.
Having launched high-end cards that retail for several hundred pounds in the form of the GeForce 8800GTS and GTX, Nvidia is now catering for the mid and low end of the market.
Three new cards are the first to arrive: the 8500GT, 8600GT and best of the bunch 8600GTS.
We've got an overclocked 8600GT in to test from MSI and, on the face of it; it looks like the perfect balance between performance and cost.
Nvidia recommends a GPU clock speed of 540MHz, however MSI has overclocked this to 580MHz.
Like the 8800 series, the 8600GT is one of the first graphics cards to use a unified shader design, which means each pipeline is capable of performing vertex, pixel, geometry or physics calculations instead of separate pipelines for each task. This results in a more efficient design where resources are allocated as needed.
MSI's 8600GT contains 32 stream processors, much lower than the 96 present in the 8800GTS and 128 in the 8800GTX. Internal shader clock speed remains at 1.2GHz, the same as 8800GTS.
MSI has also overclocked the 256MB of DDR3 onboard graphics Ram. It runs at 800MHz (1.6GHz effective), 100MHz higher than Nvidia's 700MHz reference design.
On our benchmarking kit (an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800, Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard and 1GB Ram), performance was impressive in 3Dmark05, with a score of 9,903, while the more demanding 3Dmark06 returned a very good 5,984.
The NX8600GT-T2D256E-OC is great for gaming at 1,200x1,024 resolutions and below. Half-Life2, Far Cry, Doom3 and Fear, all remained playable and above 60fps (frames per second).
When we turned on 4x FSAA (anti-aliasing) and 4xAF (anisotropic filtering) at 1,200x1,024 scores wobbled a bit, although only two games dropped below 60fps - Doom3 dropped to 48fps and Fear dropped to 37fps.
At resolutions above this game play wasn't particularly smooth, hovering between 25fps and 55fps, and you'd be better off with something like a 320MB 8800GTS.
As you can see from our benchmarking website , at resolutions of 1,200x1,024 and above, 8800GTS cards pushed out roughly double the frame rate of the 8600GT.
It's not as fast as the ATI Radeon X1950GT, and it's certainly no replacement for an Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX or 7900GTX, but this card is superior to Nvidia's GeForce 7600GT and ATI's X1650 range.
At £95 it sits in the same price category as low-end 7900GS cards. ATI's Radeon X1950Pro only costs £5 more and performance wise we'd pick it out of the whole bunch.
The back of the card is equipped with two dual link DVI-I outputs so the card can power two 3,840x2,400 monitors at 30Hz, which is an excellent arrangement for a sub-£100 card.
The GeForce 8600GT and 8500GT graphics processing units (GPUs) do not contain HDCP keys as standard, however manufacturers can add chips to their cards to do this.
Using a Sony BWU-100A Blu-ray drive and HDCP enabled display, we ascertained that MSI's NX8600GT-T2D256E-OC is not HDCP enabled and the system failed to playback a Blu-ray movie.
This means it's not ideal for playing back high definition content, although by installing AnyDVD HD, the card will bypass ACSS encryption and we found the card was very capable at outputting 1080p content through the DVI ports.
There's no need for an external power connector for the card, which many will appreciate, and it's a quiet device. The card is also relatively short at only 17.7cm and is a breeze to plug in, especially after the hassle of 27cm 8800 cards.
It's certainly not an attractive card though, and modders with see-through cases might be dissatisfied with the bland styling.
The performance of MSI's 8600GT is reasonable, especially when compared to expensive GeForce 7600GT cards, while its compact size and DirectX 10 functionality add to its appeal.
See also:
High-end graphics card, though not quite the fastest 28 Feb 2007
An overclocked beast of a graphics card 20 Feb 2007
Budget AGP graphics, but faster options are available at a similar price point 15 Feb 2007All Graphics Cards Tags: Graphics Card
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