Product Reviews

So far Nvidia's DirectX 10-compatible graphics chips have all been very expensive. With its new 8600-range, the company is aiming for the mid-range market. ECS's N8600GTS-256MX+ is the first graphics card we've seen to use the GeForce 8600GTS graphics processor. MSI's NX8600GT OC Edition card uses the slightly slower GeForce 8600GT graphics processor.

As with the high-end GeForce 8800-based cards, ECS's N8600GTS-256MX+ uses Nvidia's stream processors rather than pixel pipelines. Stream processors can do the job of a standard shader, draw vertices or even make physics calculations. This means that they can be configured to work in different ways to suit different game environments. For example, creating a 3D room requires only a few vertices, so most of the stream processors can be used as shaders, creating a detailed environment. When creating a large landscape a lot of vertices are needed, so most of the processors can be used for this job instead.

While the high-end 8800GTX has 128 stream processors and the 8800GTS has 96 stream processors, the 8600GTS has just 32, running at 1.45GHz. The card's core runs at 720MHz, while the 256MB GDDR3 memory runs at 1.1GHz (2.2GHz

The N8600GTS's memory has a higher clock speed than a GeForce 8800GTX or 8800GTS, but has only a 128-bit memory interface. The high-end cards have a 384-bit memory interface, so they shift more data at a lower clock speed.

To see how the drastic drop in stream processors from the high-end cards affects performance, we put the N8600GTS through our demanding set of benchmarks. We weren't that impressed. The Prey frame rate at 1,280x1,024 was good, but not astounding, while our Call of Duty 2 frame rate showed that we'd have to turn down detail settings to make it smoother.

We weren't expecting to get the same results we got from the 8800 cards we've reviewed, but we weren't expecting such a massive drop in performance. It may get better with DirectX 10 games when they're released, but with none available we were unable to test this. For now, a Radeon X1950 Pro, such as Gigabyte's GV-RX195P256D-RH is much quicker and cheaper, too.

The N8600GTS isn't all bad. Its power requirements are lower than those of its big brothers, so it requires only a single PCI-E power adaptor. The card is considerably shorter, too, and takes up a single slot, so it will fit into most cases. The single fan is quiet, so there are fewer problems with noise.

The potential for better performance in the future doesn't excuse this card's incredibly high price. It's more than £50 more expensive than MSI's similar-performing NX8600GT OC Edition, which is an incredible premium for very little extra performance. For now, the Radeon X1950 Pro, with its considerably better performance and lower price, is a much better choice.