NVIDIA offered up the first true DirectX 10 card in November of 2006, but after the GeForce 8800 series laid claim to the overall performance crown, a mainstream follow-up was a long time coming. That certainly changed in a hurry, and not only did NVIDIA unleash their GeForce 8400, 8500 and 8600 series, but AMD/ATI also followed with a set of Radeon HD 2600 based mainstream cards. This makes for a very interesting market at the $100-200 price range, with many potential DirectX 10 cards at a wide range of budgets. The GeForce 8600 GTS is one of the more appealing models, as it is the most powerful NVIDIA option in this range, offering a nice price, performance and features. - Sharky Extreme

Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB Graphics Review

The GeForce 8600 series is comprised of the GeForce 8600 GT and GTS, and they both use the 80nm G84 graphics processor, which features 32 stream processors, clocked at 1.19GHz for the GeForce 8600 GT and 1.45GHz on the GeForce 8600 GTS. These two models also differ in terms of core and memory clock speeds, running at 540/1400MHz for the GeForce 8600 GT and 675/2000MHz on the GeForce 8600 GTS. The GeForce 8600 series follows the GeForce 8800 line by offering a unified shader architecture that supports the DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0 feature set.

The GeForce 8600 GT and GTS include 256MB of GDDR3 by default, and supports features such as NVIDIA Lumenex, PureVideo HD, nView, and SLI technologies. The only potential issue with the architecture is the decision to use a 128-bit memory interface. This is a big step down from the 256-bit memory link featured on last generation high-end video cards, not even mentioning the 384-bit memory link on the GeForce 8800 GTX and Ultra. To get around this limitation, NVIDIA has set the memory clock speed at 2.0GHz, but this doesn't clear up all the issues, mainly linked with the available bandwidth.

The Gigabyte edition of the GeForce 8600 GTS does not deviate from the base specifications, and runs at the standard clock speeds of 675MHz core, 1.45GHz shaders, and 2.0GHz memory. The physical design is the exact opposite, and Gigabyte has gone the passive cooling route with a Silent-Pipe 3 design. This incorporates a large heatsink, which connects to a back mounted heatsink cooling device using dual heat pipes. This pulls cool air into the chassis, which flows over the GPU and heatsink, exiting the case through an internal fan or via the power supply, and makes the Gigabyte card a bit heavier.

The overall benchmark performance of the Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB is very good for a mainstream video card. In some games, it can compete with higher-end video cards, while dropping back to mainstream levels in others. The Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB currently sells in the $170-190 range, which isn't much more expensive than the $160-175 range of a bare bones GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB card, and about on par with a top name brand model. This is a great value, when you consider the Gigabyte model features a silent cooling fan design and an excellent retail bundle.

The wave of mainstream DirectX 10 cards walk a very fine line between performance on current games, and cutting edge support for upcoming ones. The Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB offers exceptional performance for a mainstream card, and while the 128-bit memory interface does limit the card when it comes to ultra high-end widescreen resolutions and anti-aliasing support, the card is powerful enough to make use of its DirectX 10 feature set. The Silent-Pipe heatsink also gets the Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB high marks, as does it rock solid design and excellent retail bundle.