Whenever NVIDIA releases a new mid-range part these days, the thought of them taking the performance crown for that price range is less of a possibility and more of a certainty. For the majority of the past two generations, NVIDIA have dominated this sector of the discrete graphics industry with something approaching an iron fist, via first the GeForce 6600 GT, and then its successor the GeForce 7600 GT accelerator. Only in very recent times have rival ATI finally managed to catch on to creating boards with that sprinkle of mid-range magic, courtesy of their RV570 core, the Radeon X1950 PRO boards. Thus, for the first time since long, NVIDIA got some real rivalry in this market. - Elite Bastards

Foxconn GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB Graphics Review

However, today sees NVIDIA getting ready to roll out the mainstream big guns once again, bringing their DirectX 10 capable G8x architecture down to this lower price range. The core is G84, the product name is the GeForce 8600 GTS, and its target is broadly the price point currently occupied by the GeForce 7900 GS and Radeon X1950 PRO. There's no doubting that this board will have the features, but does it have the performance to match? This new core is based heavily around NVIDIA's G80 architecture, though a bit optimized and reduced to play its role on the mid-range segment.

The Foxconn board sticks rigidly to reference specifications, giving us a G84 based part with a 675MHz core clock, 1450MHz shader clock, and 256MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 2000MHz effective. Foxconn have also opted to stick with NVIDIA's single slot, reference cooler for this board, albeit with their own rather nifty artwork atop it. As per most NVIDIA graphics parts, SLI is supported via the inter GPU connector at the top of the board, and a 6-pin power connector is provided to power the part via the relevant connector on your power supply. So in the end a standard design, being as reference as it can be.

Next on our agenda is overclocking performance, to see how far we can push both the G84 core and the memory from its stock conditions. To do this, rather than using Foxconn's own overclocking tool, we'll use the latest version of NVIDIA's very own nTune application, which has taken over from the CoolBits registry hacking, providing overclocking functionality via the driver control panel. Starting out with core overclocking, we soon garnered some decent results with little effort, pushing it up to a stable clock speed of 736MHz. On to memory, we found ourselves with plenty of headroom, giving us a final speed of 2228MHz.

On to the board itself, you can't help but feel a bit of a buzz from seeing DirectX 10 capable graphics boards entering more mainstream retail price points, a move that has been highly anticipated by many, and one that NVIDIA has once again beaten ATI to the punch with. That the G8x architecture has moved to this level while retaining its wonderful anti-aliasing and texture filtering qualities in the bargain is really the icing on the cake. Which brings us to performance, an area where the pressure is really on for NVIDIA to deliver here given their excellent recent track record with mid-range parts.

We really want to like this board for what it brings to the industry and mainstream gaming in terms of both feature set and image quality, but right now it's simply too early to get the necessary grasp on its performance abilities to whole heartedly recommend it. To finish with a word on Foxconn's take on the GeForce 8600 GTS, it's exactly what you'd expect and ask for of a board of this level. A rock-solid, reference based product with a no frills bundle which gives you everything you should need. Oh, and did we mention how much we love the box and cooler artwork?