Whether or not you are looking to purchase a low-end, mid-range or high-end graphics card, the choices are endless. It certainly doesn't help when there are fivehundred different versions of a card available. Thanks to this, it's smart to read around to find out which card suits you best, since you could easily purchase a card that doesn't meet your expectations, or vice versa, paying more for a card that has power you will never touch. The graphics card we are taking a look at today comes from Gigabyte, a company better known for creating feature rich motherboards. This graphics card is a budget mid-range offering, retailing for an average price of $180 at most popular e-tailers. - Techgage

Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS Silent-Pipe Card Review

This G86 card brings a lot to the table for gamers who don't want to spend too much money. The retail price of this card is made even better considering it includes a popular game that currently retails for $30. Of course, that value is nihil if you already own the game. Like the rest of NVIDIA's GeForce 8 series cards, this one offers DirectX 10 support, although there is virtually no reason to purchase the card based on that reason alone. And yes, DirectX 10 is still in it's infancy and titles to fully support the technology are not common. The main question should be, who should consider a GeForce 8600 GTS card?

Anyone who wants a solid gaming card, that's also silent. Because these cards run cooler than the GeForce 8800 GTS or GTX, obviously, most graphics card companies are choosing to release them sans a fan. They will run a bit warmer this way, but the silence is usually preferred by most. That might lead you to believe that it would be a perfect home theater PC card, but that would ultimately depend on the size of your case, since most passive coolers are far larger than those that include a fan. So although being quiet as main strong point, these cards might take up a bit more space to fit your box.

One area where we have to give Gigabyte kudos is for their packaging. While this doesn't matter much in most regards, it's great to look at and the product itself is well secured inside, to assure you receive everything in great shape. The GeForce 8600 GTS has a Supreme Commander inspired box. In fact, Supreme Commander is the primary focus of attention here, which seems a little foolish from a marketing standpoint. Though a modest offering, the card looks like a monster thanks to it's bulky passive cooler. It's certainly ugly, but it has a specific job to do, where looks don't matter.

When purchasing a lower-end card, overclocking becomes far more appealing. Let's face it, overclocking a GeForce 8800 GTX, for most people, is completely needless, as it's already an incredible card. Luckily, Gigabyte's GeForce 8600 GTS did overclock a fair amount, although not on the memory. The stock clock is 675MHz, which we overclocked to 740MHz without breaking a sweat. Any higher is unstable though, 750MHz crashes promptly. The stock memory speed is 2.0GHz, which we managed to overclock to 2.08GHz. Hardly impressive, but at least the nice GPU core boost makes up for the lackluster overclocking here.

Gigabyte's card retails for an average of $180, which is right in line with most of the competition. Some others are more expensive, some are less expensive. The lesser expensive ones do not include a passive cooler and come sans a game. So essentially what your extra $20 gives you, is Supreme Commander and complete silence. Not a bad deal when you look at it this way. So from that standpoint, Gigabyte's card is a good value, especially if you are planning to play Supreme Commander and don't currently own a copy. And, it's a great game, we can assure you. We just happen to be horrible at it...

At this price range, it's really up to you to decide what is worth it to you. Both the GeForce 7900 GS and the ATI Radeon X1950 PRO cards offer similar performance for slightly less money, but don't include a passive cooler or a game. Any of those cards would be good choices, it just all depends in what you are looking for. If you are interested in a solid mid-range offering that also happens to be dead silent, then Gigabyte's GeForce 8600 GTS will not let you down.