Since the release of Windows Vista and DirectX 10, PC gamers have been foaming at the mouth waiting for more DirectX 10 games to hit store shelves. Only a handful of games have been released though, with a promise from game developers to see a lot more game titles released toward the end of 2007. To help gamers gear up for upcoming titles, manufacturers have been frantically working on new video cards that can harness DirectX 10's graphics capabilities. One such card is the WinFast PX8600 GTS. This 256MB card should be an excellent budget solution for those entry-level gamers who just want to be able to game in a DirectX 10 environment, but with less money to spend. - Pro-Clockers

Leadtek WinFast PX8600 GTS 256MB Graphics Review

The WinFast PX8600 GTS is attractively packaged in one of Leadtek's signature retail boxes. The WinFast PX8600 GTS is designed for gamers and multimedia users, and is one of the lower-end cards available with the NVIDIA GeForce 8 series GPU architecture. This video card is also a single slot solution, which should be perfect for those with small form factor gaming systems or users with limited space in their PC's. This card also takes advantage of NVIDIA's PureVideo technology, which NVIDIA claims is the combination of a dedicated video processing core.

This GeForce 8600 GTS requires one 6-pin PCI Express power connector to function. It also can be run with another GeForce 8600 GTS in SLI mode. Leadtek recommends users have at least a 350W power supply in their systems to power this video card. To keep costs in check, NVIDIA's reference design only calls for 256MB of on-board memory that only runs at 128-bit. The higher-end cards in the GeForce 8 series run much higher at 320-bit and 384-bit. This is something that seriously affects performance, so be mindful of this particular specification when you are purchasing your next video card.

Most GeForce 8600 GTS cards on the market run the GPU core over 700MHz and increase the memory bandwidth to at least 2100MHz. The version we are checking today only sports a 675MHz core and 2000MHz memory. But, the user can easily overclock this card on their own, so it's really not that big of an issue. Just remember there are heat and instability issues associated with overclocking hardware components. If you don't know what you're doing, it's best to leave hardware at its stock settings. For $159, consumers get a complete gaming and multimedia solution that should perform at a very high level.

We were a little hesitant about how this video card would perform at first against our mightly GeForce 8800 GTS, but after everything was said and done the WinFast PX8600 GTS really held its own in both the gaming and overclocking realms. The average frame rates convinced us that this card would be perfect for a gamer with a SFF system that they use for LAN parties and tournaments. Even though this is considered a mid-range card, we think most users will truly be overwhelmed by how high they can configure their game settings. With better cooling, we could have overclocked the WinFast PX8600 GTS even further.