nVidia GeForce 8600 graphics card test

MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-HD-OC

MSI supplies two different GeForce 8600 GTS cards, NX8600-T2D256E-HD is a standard card, but the card we tested is a factory overclocked model. The NX8600-T2D256E-HD-OC comes with a 675MHz GPU clock and 1050MHz memory clock, which is enough to end up at the top of our GeForce 8600 benchmark list. When we tried to overclock the card ourselves we reached a 775MHz GPU clock and 1135Mhz memory clock, similar to the other cards. The card as supplied by MSI is identical to nVBidia's reference model, obviously with a MSI decal on the heatsink. 

A big advantage for MSI is that they bundle the new game Companies of Heroes with the card, a game we will start to take up in our benchmark suite very soon. When writing this review the price of the MSI card is around $ 199 on pre-order, only slightly higher than the other cards, but the bundled game and overclocked settings definitely make it worth a bit more.