The mid-range graphics market is current well presented with both ATI and NVIDIA having their newest DirectX 10 capable cards widely available, delivering great performance at an acceptable price tag. Of course only one of these is really showing off the best performance, and in that case our eyes would surely be on NVIDIA with their GeForce 8600 series. The new Leadtek WinFast PX8600 GTS Extreme graphics card with the GDDR3 memory clocked to 2000MHz effective and the GPU set to 710MHz is set to be a real screamer for the money, but can it actually do it? We put this new card through some hard testing and it came out without a scratch. - Modder-Inc

Leadtek WinFast PX8600 GTS Extreme Board Review

The box displays a futuristic woman warrior ready to do battle against any foe that may come near, which suggest that the WinFast PX8600 GTS Extreme is also ready to take on any newcomers in battle. Leadtek supplies plenty of useful information about the NVIDIA based WinFast PX8600 GTS Extreme graphics card on the box. The front of the boxes shows off all the features that the WinFast PX8600 GTS can do which includes DirectX 10, Lumenex Engine and RoHS compliant. We also see that it is Windows Vista ready and if you get two of these cards you will be able to run these together in SLI mode.

This is our first look at the card itself and it looks pretty nice. We know some people look at the beauty of a card and make judgment on how well it will perform, which is why manufactures do try to make the cards look stylish. But if you really think about it all, the looks disappears after the card is installed as all the graphics are now on the bottom side. So don't let the looks fool you in the future. A normal GeForce 8600 GTS has its core set to somewhere around 675MHz and the memory set at 2000MHz effective. The WinFast PX8600 GTS Extreme is pumped up to 710MHz on the core while the memory remainq as is.

The Extreme addition uses GDDR3 memory to help increase the power of the board without having to push the memory too much. We find that a faster core will give a better increase in frame rates. But will this combination allow the card to be overclocked any further? The WinFast PX8600 GTS Extreme is a single slot PCI Express card so that means that the hot air it generates is present in the interior of the case. This holds true to all single slot cards and has to be dealt with by adding additional cooling. The notches in the duct work cover allows for some of the hot air to escape before it reaches the end.

So can this card be overclocked even though it is already called an Extreme graphics card. Well the answer is simple, yes! The stock setting, according to the NIVIDA control panel, for the card is 710MHz on the core and 2000MHz on the memory. By using the built in overclocking tool in the NIVIDA control panel we were able to play with the clock speeds pretty easy. We found that we could push the core and memory speeds to well above normal levels, but not at the same time with any great success. We found my best results were pushing the core to 775MHz and the memory to 2070MHz effective.

The Extreme edition of Leadtek's GeForce 8600 series appears to be a solid upgrade for those that need to take the jump up from a mid-range GeForce 7900 series cards. Being able to push the card in overclocking and getting fairly close to a stock GeForce 8800 GTS and the added bonus of being able to play the DirectX 10 games appears to make it a worth while move. The frame rates that the WinFast PX8600 GTS Extreme was able to generate in games, without skipping a beat, was quite surprising to us as we would have expected less from a GeForce 8600 series graphics card.