Verdict:
If Frankenstein made a graphics card... Not fast enough in 3D to be worth installing.
This is the cheapest card in the group to use a dual slot design. The extra size is because of the large heatsink required to keep the 8600GT chipset cool - all without the use of a fan. It's a clever design, if you have the space to accommodate it inside your PC, giving you the option of a fast graphics card without having to put up with extra fan noise. In fact, it was the fastest passively cooled card in our tests.
However, that's not really saying very much. Like the HD 2600XT, the 8600GT chipset was never terribly impressive. This card only managed 20 frames per second in our Call of Duty test, and 26.7fps in Prey. Both games benefited from having anti-aliasing disabled to make them run more smoothly. Call of Juarez ran at a measly 2.1fps, showing that this card is certainly not going to be suitable for upcoming DirectX 10 titles.
We like the idea of the big passive heatsink, and the price is fairly low. But you'll be stuck playing new games with low detail settings till you upgrade again, which seems short-sighted. We'd highly recommend that you find the extra cash for the HD3850 instead.
