nVidia GeForce 8600 GT / GTS test

GeForce 8600 cards

For this article we received samples of the GeForce 8600 GTS and GT by Foxconn, Point-of-View, XFX and MSI. We will publish a comparitive review of these cards later. The picture below shows the GeForce 8600 GTS reference card.

nVidia GeForce 8600 GTS

As stated before the card sports 256MB of GDDR3 memory and offers two dual-link DVI ports, both compatible with HDCP. nVidia claims the powerconsumption of the card is around 71 Watts, just barely under the maximum that a PCI-Express us can supply. To be safe nVidia did place a PEG connector on the card for additiobal power supply. The GPU and memory are hidden beneath a large cooler, which we found not te be too noisy. The card is SLI compatible andhas all necessary connection in place for a SLI setup.

nVidia GeForce 8600 GT

The 8600 GT is slightly smaller than the GTS and nVidia claims the total power consumption of this card is 43 Watts, so no need for an additional PEG connector. As the GTS this card has two dual-link DVI ports at the back and will be suitable for HDCP. SLI is possibble with this card as well, and as it is not as powerfull the cooler used on the GT is smaller than the one on the GTS.