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8600GT is it worth it?
- Thread starter Tabasco
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- 9 Jan 2006
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I just bought one for £75ish as part of a budget build for my brother who is at university. I figured it would be nice if he could use Aero off the bat and, as I said, it was for uni, not for gaming. Regardless though I'm impressed. It plays Supreme Commander at 1280x1024 with everything on max with a bit of AA, so it's idea for student LAN parties.
It's also small, quiet, uses very little power and clocks really well. I haven't pushed it as far as it goes, but some people have got 720mhz on the core without extra cooling or mods, which from 540mhz isn't bad at all. It probably won't match a X1950pro, but it won't fall short of a X1950gt. The image quality is very good too. He was using a 6800 vanilla prior to this and he said straight away how much better everything looked.
It's also small, quiet, uses very little power and clocks really well. I haven't pushed it as far as it goes, but some people have got 720mhz on the core without extra cooling or mods, which from 540mhz isn't bad at all. It probably won't match a X1950pro, but it won't fall short of a X1950gt. The image quality is very good too. He was using a 6800 vanilla prior to this and he said straight away how much better everything looked.
I bought this for my media centre pc for the following reasons
- low price (i bought the ocuk version which was an "xpertvision")
- low power requirements powered off pci-e
- low noise
- small footprint
- more than playable framerates at 720p on most games
- easy to overclock
- On chip media processing
I didnt buy cos of dx10 support but good to know i can play dx10 games if i want to. Personally I would not buy one if it was for a desktop pc, would buy an 8800 which is a class of its own but this card perfectly suits my requirements, thumbs up from me.
- low price (i bought the ocuk version which was an "xpertvision")
- low power requirements powered off pci-e
- low noise
- small footprint
- more than playable framerates at 720p on most games
- easy to overclock
- On chip media processing
I didnt buy cos of dx10 support but good to know i can play dx10 games if i want to. Personally I would not buy one if it was for a desktop pc, would buy an 8800 which is a class of its own but this card perfectly suits my requirements, thumbs up from me.
Why not ulf, its quite a bit cheaper as the cheapest 1950pro, 20 quid, and performance isn't that much worse... 
It needs less power, it probably clocks higher as a 1950 pro (in percentage terms), and 3dmark score isn't that bad...
It needs less power, it probably clocks higher as a 1950 pro (in percentage terms), and 3dmark score isn't that bad...
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The X1950Pro outclasses an 8600GTS performance-wise and costs much less. The only decent reasons I've heard for going 8600GT are, as said above, the on-chip decoding and that they apparently perform superbly in SLI.snowdog said:Why not ulf, its quite a bit cheaper as the cheapest 1950pro, and performance isn't that much worse...
Otherwise I'd just go for an X1950Pro. Better, stronger, faster.
I know that this thread is about the GT, I was just pointing out that the GTS is slower than an X1950Pro so the GT must be even slower still.snowdog said:The whole thread is about a GT, not GTS...
The GT is 20 quid less as a 1950pro...
I mean the 8600GT isnt that far behind a 1950 pro? Or am I mistaking?
It's 20% cheaper, is it more as 20% slower
, totally rubbish card then, go for the 1950pro This week Micro Mart have a budget graphics card test, and they have the Asus 8600GT performing comparably to the X1950GT in games and 3dmark06.
The 8600GT is about the same price, performs about the same, but has lower power requirements (no additional power connector required), has a decent cooler, and in the test overclocked 23% compared to the X1950GT's 13%. It's also DX10 ready...
Depends what you want from the card, and what's more important to you, but going on their review I'd say it is worth it, and I'd have it over a comparable performing DX9 card. Why buy old tech at this level of price/performance?
The 8600GT is about the same price, performs about the same, but has lower power requirements (no additional power connector required), has a decent cooler, and in the test overclocked 23% compared to the X1950GT's 13%. It's also DX10 ready...
Depends what you want from the card, and what's more important to you, but going on their review I'd say it is worth it, and I'd have it over a comparable performing DX9 card. Why buy old tech at this level of price/performance?
Yeah but pretty much every other review out there (Anandtech, FiringSquad, Hot Hardware, Guru3D, HardOCP etc.) show the 8600GT and 8600GTS to lag behind the X1950Pro, pretty badly in some situations.
I can't really just take one different review and say it's right.
I can't really just take one different review and say it's right.
Yeah, not disagreeing Ulf, just making folks aware of how MM called it.
That's why I think it's important to buy based on what you want from your card. If you want the fastest £80 to £100 card now, for games out now, then ATI is the one.
If you want DX10 at some point in the future, low power requirements and something that should OC pretty well, then maybe the GT wouldn't be a bad choice.
I guess only the OP can say whether the 8600GT is worth it, but from what I've read and looking at some of the online reviews, I'd say it probably is.
That's why I think it's important to buy based on what you want from your card. If you want the fastest £80 to £100 card now, for games out now, then ATI is the one.
If you want DX10 at some point in the future, low power requirements and something that should OC pretty well, then maybe the GT wouldn't be a bad choice.
I guess only the OP can say whether the 8600GT is worth it, but from what I've read and looking at some of the online reviews, I'd say it probably is.
Ulfhedjinn said:
8600gt can be had for 70 quid. that makes it a very good card in its price bracket and its performance is not too bad compared to x1950pro. as said above its power consumption is damn low, 43w, and its on chip video decoding functionality make it superb for media center use and dx10 is icing on the cake.
low heat output and low power consumption means that its a good card to put in small for factor case like a shuttle and its performance is better than a 7600gt which we all know is not too bad at all for low price gaming.
i use a 7600gs agp for playing games on a 32inch lcd tv running a rez of 1360x768 and i can run games like call of duty 2 with all details at max except for dynamic lights which is set to normal and soften smoke edges is set to world only. also 16xAF is enabled and im using 2xQ AA. fps is above 40fps most of the time.
not bad for a 7600gs, yes the rez is low but for a cheapo card its not too bad.
an 8600gt is double the speed of a 7600gs so you can expect some very nice gaming on that card.
the way people go on about the 8600gt they make it sound like its worse than an intel extreme integrated graphics chipset.
Yeah, just the clocks.
Mind you, the 8600GTS memory clock in particular is quite a bit faster. 2000 vs 1400. Might be hard to OC that far, but you never know.
Core on the GTS is 135mhz faster, and the Shader clock about 250mhz.
The HD decoding on these 8600's is supposed to be pretty good as well, might be another factor in any purchase.
Mind you, the 8600GTS memory clock in particular is quite a bit faster. 2000 vs 1400. Might be hard to OC that far, but you never know.
Core on the GTS is 135mhz faster, and the Shader clock about 250mhz.
The HD decoding on these 8600's is supposed to be pretty good as well, might be another factor in any purchase.