Zotac's ZONE Edition cards are passively cooled ones, which means no noise at all, and that is one desirable feature. We have already seen that Zotac was one of the first partners to show off NVIDIA full HDMI ready cards, with audio as of the signal that goes over the HDMI cable to your HDTV capable screen. NVIDIA's HDMI signal transferring is a bit more different then the one implemented on ATI Radeon HD 2000 series cards, where audio goes directly over the graphics card, generated inside the GPU itself. The ZONE Edition comes as a GeForce 8500 GT and GeForce 8600 GT card, for now at least. For your viewing pleasure we got a Zotac GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition video accelerator. - FudZilla

Zotac GeForce 8600 GT 256MB ZONE Edition Review

The most noticeable feature is the large heatsink which covers most of the card, but the good thing is that the card is still a single slot solution. Like any other GeForce 8600 GT cards, this one also doesn't need an additional power connector since it gets all the required power from the PCI Express slot. Since it is a passively cooled solution, good case airflow is a must. The heatsink is a clean and simple looking design and it's mostly made out of aluminum. For better heat transfer, it has a copper base. Heat is then transfered and dissipated from the aluminum fins, via a heatpipe that connects to both parts of the cooler.

Passively cooled cards are mostly meant for those who want a silent computer, so the reference clocks on the Zotac GeForce 8600 GT aren't a very important issue. The GPU works at 540MHz, while the memory works at 1400MHz. With the proper airflow inside the case you can even get decent overclocking results, since we managed to get the core all the way up to 674MHz, stable of course. This result gets even better if you place an additional fan near the card. The Hynix 1.4ns memory are very good and stable, which we managed to overclock up to 1470MHz without any glitches.

After some time spent with the Zotac GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition we can say that we are more then satisfied with the performance and the card itself. The most important thing is that for a bit more money then you would pay for reference GeForce 8600 GT, you will get a silent card that is capable of delivering HDMI audio and video signal to your favorite HDTV capable screen. With good case airflow the temperature won't get to critical value. The performance is enough for any available game on the market. If you want a dead silent card with good performance, Zotac Geforce 8600 GT ZONE Edition is surely a great offer.