GeForce 8600 GTS pictured and benchmarked

[Eric_Cartman]

Without that 256bit memory bus the card is already dated.

no it isn't, 128-bit is still perfectly fine for mid-range cards

the 128-bit cards from the next generation outperform the 256-bit cards from last generation most of the time

I wouldnt say the card is that fast, assuming its 06 score is with it OCd, its just about topped out. You cant rely on a CPU to give additional horsepower for a final score as very few games use the CPU for much these days, the GPU handles 99% of it. So it wouldnt surprise me if a weaker CPU was deliberately picked to put into the test system.

nothing suggested the score is with the card overclocked, and what you seem to not understand is they used a weak ass processor with it

which will greatly affect the final score

If the 8600GTS barely has enough grunt for current games to run smoothly, explain to us all again how its going to have enough horsepower to run DX10 Admittedly DX10 supposedly brings amazing performance inprovements, but what do you think programmers are going to do with all the extra power? Most likely wittle it away by dumping additional poorly optimized tasks onto the GPU or use the extra power to put yet more details into environments etc, slowing the card down to a crawl, meaning you would need a better card anyway. 128bit memory interface is just totally outdated and only should be used on low end cards like the 8300GT.

who says it barely has enough grunt to run current games?

even with the terrible processor holding it back it still managed to outscore all but the highest end gpus on the market today

a stock 7900gt handles any game on the market today with decent settings, and this thing outscores it even with the terrible cpu

i've seen x1950Pros that could barely break 5000 in 06 even when paired with strong cpus

you can go over to the orb and look at all the x1950Pro scores with single core athlon 64 chips and see only one managed to break 5000 actually

 

[newtekie1]

You can always tell who the ATI fanboys are when nVidia releases(or is about to release) a card that is superior to anything else in the price point. The ATI fanboys are the ones nitpicking the card and making bold statements that the card isn't worth it for whatever reason(128-bit memory, "poor performance", etc).

 

[wazzledoozle]

No matter the price point or DX9 performance, I want to see its DX10 performance against ATI's DX10 cards. Id hate to get caught in another FX series-fiasco.