Much like the GTS which we checkd on launch day the GeForce 8600 GT is aimed at the price conscious consumer who still wants to play today's games at reasonable resolutions. Just like its bigger brother the GT fully supports the DirectX 10 standard and has an impressive array of video decoding features under the hood. But whereas the GTS has two HDCP enabled dual DVI connectors by default, it was left up to the individual card manufacturers to decide whether they would add HDCP support to the GT or not. A reference GeForce 8600 GT is otherwise more or less a downclocked version of the GTS, with reduced power consumption as main result. - DriverHeaven

XFX GeForce 8600 GT and GTS XXX Edition Review

So the GeForce 8600 GTS and GT are quite similar, as both cards have the same amount of stream processors, are fabricated with 80nm technology and have a 128-bit memory interface. Just like the GTS the GeForce 8600 GT is also very effective at handling textures, in certain situations even better than the GeForce 8800 series due to some optimizations. By default the GeForce 8600 GT's are running at 540MHz while the memory is set to 1400MHz effective. The shader clock runs at a high 1.19GHz speed. All in all a very impressive board, especially considering its price starts at $150.

As always XFX did their homework and packed the card in a very attractive looking box. Although the packaging is small they still managed to pack in all of the standard connectors, the driver CD and a very well written manual. There is no extra software included in the package, which is a slight disappointment. The XFX GeForce 8600 GT XXX edition looks just like any other reference GT, not counting some very good looking color decisions. The most noticeable thing is the black PCB, which looks great against the white cooler. XFX decided to take it one notch higher and used black on the rest of the board as well.

So the GeForce 8600 GT XXX definitely looks better than any other GT out there. Hand in hand with these design choices come the amazing speeds the XXX card runs at. How does a 620MHz core and memory running at 1600MHz sound? It sounds amazing to us, especially considering the minuscule and ultra quiet cooling solution. The important question to answer here is whether XFX opted to include HDCP support with their GeForce 8600 GT or not. As with every XFX product we saw so far there are no letdowns here either, so the answer is obviously yes, HDCP over DVI is part of the package.

Having tested the GT first we expected the GTS to look more or less the same. Surprisingly enough this was not the case. They used the standard green PCB this time around, so some of the coolness factor that the GT has isn't present here. The black bar at the top of the card remedies some of this though. For those of you who are into SLI don't worry, you can easily connect the SLI bridge all the same. As the box clearly states the card runs at a high 730MHz right out of the box. The memory received a boost as well and is set to 2260MHz effective. A high overclock considering that XFX opted to use the reference cooler.

Consumers on a budget finally have access to DirectX 10 capable cards. The GeForce 8600 GT might not be the fastest card on the planet and it definitely isn't intended for playing at high resolutions or with extreme image quality settings. It is aimed at people who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a video card, but still want to be able to play most of the recently released games at moderate settings. The XFX GeForce 8600 GT XXX edition is possibly the fastest GT card currently available. Because of that its performance is well above the average, often rivaling the performance of a reference GeForce 8600 GTS.

Much like the GT, XFX's card is probably the fastest GTS available at the moment. Its high speeds also make it the fastest middle-range graphics card right now. The closest competitor, the Radeon X1950 PRO is usually a bit pricier and it also has no DirectX 10 support. While this isn't critical right now it won't be long before the first batch of DirectX 10 enabled games comes out. At that point the GeForce 8600 GTS will have a clear advantage. The main question is the high price of the card, at least when compared to the other GeForce 8600 GTS cards on the market.

The packaging while good doesn't justify the big price difference. The high clocks are XFX's main argument, but nowadays anyone can overclock their card all on their own. So why would somebody want to pay the premium? It's quite simple really. When you buy a reference GeForce 8600 GTS you can't be sure how far you'll be able to push the card. With XFX's GeForce 8600 GTS XXX edition you know that the card is capable of delivering 730MHz out of the box, and possibly more with further manual overclocking.