BFG recently released their ThermoIntelligence line of graphics cards. We already checked out their lovely GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 version. They however decided to move forward with that line and introduce more products. Four new additions have been made based off one model, the GeForce 8600 GT. You will now notice an OC, OC2, 256MB and 512MB model of these video cards with a ThermoIntelligence slapped onto the packaging. Via this way, BFG is promoting their own custom cooling design for the GeForce 8600 GT cards which allows better cooling and a more quiet operation. A great initiative to set their product range apart from the competitors. - Guru3D

BFG GeForce 8600 GT OC ThermoIntelligent Review

The GeForce 8600 GT comes with 32 shader units inside the GPU which is not a lot, but for a mid-range product it is decent enough if you give the product the proper what we call framebuffer performance. The memory on your graphics card is very influential when you look at its bandwidth. So when NVIDIA launched the GeForce 8600 series we were surprised to see a 128-bit bus as in 2007 we should have really moved towards a 256-bit bus. In fact, a 256-bit memory is dirt cheap so that's just not a logical step from our point of view. Hopefully this will change shortly for the better on the mid-range segment.

What's the physical difference between the GeForce 8600 GT and GTS? The answer is nothing for the GPU other than the core and memory clocks and likely internal GPU voltage. So if you receive a GT that can overclock well, you could be able to bring it close to GTS speeds and save some extra bucks. Really it's the same GPU yet specified slower. Also good to know, every feature that is present on the GeForce 8800 series is also available on this chip architecture. And as you can understand these cards all have full DirectX 10 compatibility and Windows Vista ready.

In every possible way the BFG product is the same, and yet also not. You open up the box, then the eye noticed a blue colored PCB, diverting from reference design cooler, then you look at the specifications and notice the core frequency is bumped up slightly towards 565MHz. The memory frequency however remains the same. We do wish the OC models from BFG would be overclocked slightly faster as the core can definitely have it. But then it would be competing with BFG's OC2 model graphics cards. Anyway the top of the cream batch card can be clocked even higher and this get that OC2 label slapped on them.

Alright, so it goes like this. We felt that the GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 is a difficult product to place in the market, this is based on its price performance ratio whereas this GeForce 8600 GT OC suits my needs much better. Priced at $200 it offers a reasonable amount of performance for your money. Armed with the blue PCB, custom cooler and severely high overclocking potential this can in fact be an interesting purchase. The custom cooler which falls under the Thermo Intelligent label really is lovely. The bonus however is that is does seem to cool much better and help to overclock further.