The mainstream and high-end areas of the graphics card market tend to get the most attention, and for obvious reasons, as these are the products that can either pump out the framerates or offer killer price performance ratios. But that doesn't mean entry level buyers are any less important, as sub-$100 video cards represent a very lucrative market. It all comes down to numbers, and there are far more buyer walking around with a C-note in their pockets, than there are with a budget of several hundred dollars, so companies like ATI and NVIDIA can definitely make it up in volume. And that is exactly what they do with the mid-range graphics card segment. - Sharky Extreme

Gigabyte GeForce 8500 GT 256MB Graphics Review

The GeForce 8500 GT graphics processor features an 80nm G86 core, and is positioned right between the GeForce 8400 and GeForce 8600 models. This is different from the G84 found in the GeForce 8600 GT and GTS cards, and features 16 stream processors, as opposed to the 32 found in the GeForce 8600. Default clock speeds on the stream processors are also a bit lower, with the GeForce 8500 GT being set at 900MHz. The core and memory clock speeds follow suit, and check in at 450MHz and 800MHz, respectively. Like all of the GeForce 8 series, the GeForce 8500 GT offers a unified shader architecture.

Gigabyte offers two different versions of the GeForce 8500 GT, one in a base design at default clock speeds, and a special TurboForce edition with enhanced cooling and significantly higher clock speeds. We're looking at the latter card, and it runs at higher 600MHz core, 1200MHz shader clock and 1400MHz memory speeds. These are significant overclocks, with a nice boost of both the core and memory clock speed. Onboard memory has also been upgraded to GDDR3 to support the higher clocks, and this particular revision looks more like a GeForce 8600 than a GeForce 8500 GT accelerator.

The overall benchmark results of the Gigabyte GeForce 8500 GT 256MB are hardly that exciting, but no entry level video card can shoot it out with the big boys. As with all GeForce 8 series cards, the GeForce 8500 GT 256MB does better with newer games, as these are being tuned for the latest hardware. It still does a very respectable job in older tests, especially for a sub-$100 entry-level video card, and is a very serious contender at this price to performance range. The Gigabyte version manages to fit into that elusive sub-$100 entry level graphics market, and will likely attract a lot of potential buyers.

The GeForce 8500 GT may not be a world beating GPU, but after Gigabyte has given it the TurboForce treatment, this higher clocked revision is a far more capable video card. Coming in at only $90 for DirectX 10 card, Gigabyte has essentially made the GeForce 7600 GS cards obsolete, as the GeForce 8500 GT 256MB outperforms it at the same price range. The energy saving fan design is also a big plus, especially for those with small form factor PC or low noise systems, and it even comes with a free game. Overall, Gigabyte is offering a very competitive video card for the entry level buyer.