Just about four and a half years ago, a company started by ex-VisionTek executives entered the already crowded graphics card market with the hope of capturing the enthusiast and hardcore gaming audience. The plan was to factory overclock many of their products, offer a life time warranty, and have a dedicated technical support staff ready to answer any questions or troubleshoot any problems end users may encounter throughout the life of their cards. Fast forward to present day, and BFG is well respected in the enthusiast and gamer communities, and in addition to their top to bottom graphics line, they now have a growing motherboard, power supply, and even physics cards. - HotHardware

BFG GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 Graphics Board Review

With that said, the main focus of BFG is still set on the graphics space, and today we will be taking a look at one of BFG's latest offerings in the $199-249 graphics card sweet spot, the place gamers and enthusiasts on a budget try to find the greatest value in their graphics card. The card in question is the BFG GeForce 8600 GTS OC2, a factory overclocked version of the GeForce 8600 GTS. Priced at $229-249 and running at a 720MHz core clock and 2220MHz memory clock, will the BFG GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 give enough performance to justify a new graphics card purchase?

The first thing you notice when looking at the BFG GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 is that the card does not use NVIDIA's reference GeForce 8600 GTS cooling unit. With the GeForce 8600 series, BFG is introducing a new cooling brand called ThermoIntelligence. The ThermoIntelligence series will be exclusive to BFG with the goal of bringing powerful and quiet single slot cooling to select cards in the BFG product line. BFG plans to bring water cooled units to market in the near future, but currently the custom designed coolers are only available with the GeForce 8600 series.

Strictly speaking in terms of performance, cooling, and overclockability, the BFG GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 is arguably the most attractive GeForce 8600 GTS card currently on the market. The BFG GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 features the company's custom, near silent ThermoIntelligence cooling solution, it ships from the factory with GPU and memory clock speeds significantly higher than NVIDIA's reference specifications for increased performance, and it is backed by a lifetime warranty. The card also overclocked well, hitting and 803MHz core frequency and memory clock speed of 2374MHz.

Unfortunately the BFG GeForce 8600 GTS OC2's accessory bundle is somewhat bland and the card is priced much higer than it competition. With a price somewhere between $229 and $249 on-line, this is the most expensive GeForce 8600 GTS by a large margin. Video buffs on the other hand can save themselves roughly $50-60 by going with a reference GeForce 8600 GTS and overclocking the card themselves. It may not be as quiet or hit clock speeds quite as high as BFG's offering, but it's difficult to justify the BFG GeForce 8600 GTS OC2's price tag in the current graphics card landscape.