New graphics cards are great, especially when they are in the affordable for most people range. NVIDIA's GeForce 8600 and 8500 series has been a long waited product. Most importantly it's the first affordable DirectX 10 capable graphics card from any company and NVIDIA even have Windows Vista drivers ready for the new range of cards at launch time. This product is so good for the market for some reason, one them being that consumers who don't have thousands of dollars to spend on a PC can now buy something that is going to offer support for the next generation of graphics and with a much more attractive price tag which will stimulate the game developers. - TweakTown

XFX GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB XXX Edition Review

The last two generations of mid-range graphics cards from NVIDIA have followed a GT naming scheme as the top mid-range card, the GeForce 6600 GT was the best of the GeForce 6600 series and the GeForce 7600 GT was the best of the GeForce 7600 series. This time around the GeForce 8600 GT is the second best of the series and the new bad boy is the GeForce 8600 GTS graphics card. It's also nice to see that XFX have moved back to the X shaped box with the latest graphics card from them. It’s a very standard front box layout, this particular model is the XXX edition, which is a step up from the Extreme model.

The front of the card is dominated by the largish heatsink fan combination but on a very positive note, the cooler is thin enough that it doesn't take up any other slots. The smaller fan means that it has to spin at a higher speed to push more air which results in more noise. Well, the card isn't whisper quiet but at the same time, it isn't what we would call unbearable either. It could be a lot worse though as XFX managed to attain a large factory overclock with just stock cooling. The back of the card is as always very standard looking, we have our normal array of numbers that tell us what the card is and the normal details.

NVIDIA's standard GeForce 8600 GTS comes clocked in with a core of 675MHz and a memory clock of 2000MHz effective. While XFX do have this model, they also have an Extreme edition that has a core clock of 720MHz and memory clock of 2180MHz effective. Finally there is the XXX version with a 730MHz core and a crazy 2260MHz affective memory clock, which is quite a boost over the regular reference versions and more than enough grant to play hard. Two of the major features are two dual link DVI connectivity connectors and the fact that HDCP is supported.

So, two questions, what do we think of NVIDIA's new GeForce 8600 GTS and what do we think about the XFX XXX incarnation. From what a bit of research has shown us, the XFX XXX version is going to be the fastest GeForce 8600 GTS graphics card on the market and this is of course going to come with the typical price premium. Before we get too much into that though, let's just have a quick look at the GeForce 8600 GTS on the whole. We've established that the actual GeForce 8600 GTS chip design from NVIDIA is great but what about XFX and their further refinements? XFX has also done a fantastic job.

Actually XFX offer huge gains in performance over the standard clocked version and to the best of our knowledge XFX is offering the highest clock speed out of any NVIDIA partners. XFX seemed to have gone right to the edge with the XXX edition, and only a jump of a few MHz on the core would result in a screen full of artifacts. Is this the limit of the GeForce 8600 GTS, period? In fact NVIDIA are really on the ball at the moment and hopefully we begin to see some DirectX 10 games released in the coming months, as it really is the only thing missing. So, should you buy a GeForce 8600 GTS if you have the money?

If you already have a GeForce 7900 GS or a Radeon X1950 PRO, we wouldn't recommend buying as you're not really upgrading, unless you must have DirectX 10 support. If you're using something older or slower such as GeForce 7600 GT or Radeon X1650 XT and you're ready to make an upgrade, it's a totally brilliant choice with the future in mind. XFX's GeForce 8600 GTS XXX edition is going to cost you around $240 at launch and a regular version without factory overclocking will set you back around $200, making the product something to take into serious consideration in our opinion.