OCC Review: XFX 8600 GTS XXX Edition Options

[neddamttocs]

OCC Review: XFX 8600 GTS XXX Edition

So you don’t like change and dread parting with that old DirectX 9 card that gave you years of solid performance, but it's starting to fall behind the times. Finally, after much debate you decide to move forward and purchase a new DirectX 10 video card, but you really don’t want to spend your whole paycheck on one. You make the decision to purchase a “mainstream” video card that will give you the ability to play upcoming DirectX 10 games and possibly have HD capabilities. One of your choices will be the XFX 8600 GTS XXX Edition. This DirectX 10 video card comes pre-overclocked, has 256Mb of DDR3 memory and is also HDCP and HDTV ready. Your mouth is beginning to water, but before you start to drool, you choose to do a little research.

[Fireonice]

A little research will show you that anything below a 8800 is a waste of money if your upgrading beucase of dx10... You cant play dx10 games with a 8600 gts.... At least with dx10 settings.

Good review they keep getting better and better

[Bosco]

Thats not true alot will depend on what resolution you are running and there is still not a ton of titles out there yet for us to make a fair judgement call yet.

But I agree anything below 8800 on 1600 or bigger is not exactly a great idea

[Fireonice]

Well maby i was a little harsh on saying you cant play dx10 games with this card. I really do feel that upcoming dx10 games are going to make this card scream!!!

[ClayMeow]

Well honestly, until we actually review video cards on Vista with DX10 games/benches, we can't get any good, relevant performance picture of the DX10 cards. We can all assume it'll take the high-end cards to play any DX10 game maxxed, but like bosco said, not everyone feels the need to play at the highest resolutions and settings and will sacrifice some of that for a more affordable solution.

Overall, I think it was a good review, though I don't like the Quake 4 analysis. The frames in the high-end cards don't move much regardless of resolution, indicating to me other factors, like the CPU, affecting those numbers, or maybe even a cap initiated by the game that has to be turned off? Because this wasn't a high end card, the numbers are still relevant, but for the high end cards, the Q4 bench doesn't show us anything.

[Verran]

I'd have to agree that this card kind of seems like a waste. I just don't get the point of a low-end DX10 card. I look at benches like this and I just have to wonder. (Ignore the 2900XT numbers. Lost planet is biased towards nVidia just like Call of Jaurez is biased towards ATi)

But if an 8800GTX is pulling down only 44fps in some scenes at 1280 res, would you really want to run an 8600? I mean maybe at 1024, but even then, if you're the type of person who's willing to play at 1024, do you really care much about a couple of DX10 visuals?

I could never justify spending that much on a card that performed so poorly, DX10 or no.

The review was good though, as always

[jammin]

Absolute judgement will reserved until we get some native DX10 games. I would tend to agree though, right now I would rather have a higher performing DX9 card.