NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT: video card performance, review, testing

An inexpensive solution from NVIDIA - a video adapter based on the 8600 GT, it has long strengthened its position in the budget class in the market of our country. The fact is that the video card is in demand when building office solutions, multimedia centers and home computers for work. The characteristics of the video card, review, testing and feedback from owners will tell in this article about the device a lot of interesting.

Trends in the computer market

Recently, integrated video systems have significantly risen in price on the world market, because in addition to supporting video on the motherboard, the technology should be implemented on the core of the CPU. If all these requirements translate into a monetary equivalent, it turns out that for an integrated video adapter it is necessary to pay about 5000 thousand rubles. Naturally, savvy users will have a desire to save on such expenses. The purchase of a video card based on NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT is just such a solution (the market price is 3000 rubles).

Unlike AMD's competitor products, this video adapter has full support of the manufacturer, therefore, work with new operating systems is guaranteed. Many owners in their reviews note that the video card is well defined at the level of drivers in Windows 10 (64-bit). This is a serious argument for all potential buyers.

Specifications of the 8600 GT

And if the reader thinks that he is the weakest representative of the budget computer market for video cards, then he is very mistaken. The NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT video adapter pushed the newer chips only thanks to the manufacturer's policy: new technologies, increased graphics core frequency and the like. In fact, a representative of the budget class (albeit at low settings) is able to cope with many popular games. First of all, the guarantee of this is the technical characteristics of the video card:

• The G84 graphics processor is built on 80-nanometer technology and has 289 million transistors on the chip;
• The nominal processor frequency is 540 MHz;
• DDR3 memory runs on a 128-bit bus with a frequency of 1400 MHz and has 256 and 512 megabytes on board (the PCB supports an increase of up to 1 GB);
• Unified shader processors - 32 (as in most modern integrated systems);
• On the 8600 GT, full support for analog and digital video is realized, including VIVO (some manufacturers have removed this interface on their own initiative).

Implementation of modern technologies

Performance in games provides not only the bandwidth of the memory bus and the work of the graphics processor, but also a set of proprietary technologies that are implemented at the hardware level in the "Geforce 8600 GT". And here there is something to be proud of:

• Support of work in SLI mode;
• The maximum size of textures is 8192x8192 pixels per inch;
• Support for the Cubic Environment Map (CEM);
• Degree of full-screen anti-aliasing (FSAA) up to 16xQ with a maximum color depth of 32 bits;
• Hardware decoder mpeg2, H.264, VC1 and WMV;
• Support for CUDA, PhysX, DXVA, HDTV and the ability to work with 4K monitors (the last parameter is not advertised due to the problems associated with connecting some brands of monitors).

However, when comparing the characteristics of the video card with the current versions of the products, the user still does not find support for the digital output with streaming audio from HDMI and a very popular DisplayPort interface. True, there is an optional implementation of HDCP, but it requires a special converter for its operation. Does not support the 8600 GT video adapter and textures with an indexed color palette, which is the reason for the inability of some new high-performance games.

The policy of the manufacturer in the world market

Video card 8600 GT, presented in a budget niche, can be not only under the logos of well-known brands, as is often accepted. Demanded devices are sometimes delivered from the factory to the market, bypassing intermediaries. The purchase of a product under the NVIDIA logo guarantees the owner that before him is really an original video card that has not been finalized by anyone.

Judging by numerous reviews of owners, performance is the main characteristic of the video card in the world market. And the original products of the manufacturer always have the most affordable price and decent quality. We suggest to get acquainted with the product more closely.

Introduction to the original video card from NVIDIA

In the product from the manufacturer, the video card based on the 8600 GT, performance characteristics are considered to be as balanced as possible for efficient operation in the regular mode. First of all, this is the noiseless operation of the device, which is provided by the proprietary cooling system from NVIDIA. However, according to the owners in the media, the graphics adapter has the ability to overheat when overclocking the graphics processor and memory bus.

The problem lies in the placement of the power management system in the back of the PCB. Not only that the power supply circuits are not covered by the radiator, so they also transfer their heat to the radiator of the graphic chip. If you look at other NVIDIA 8600 GT products from other manufacturers, the user will find that the power controllers have transferred them to the front of the video card or have their own cooling system in the form of passive radiators.

Improving the performance of the video adapter

As the owners of the original NVIDIA cards note, for the 8600 GT chip overclocking is undesirable. There are many reasons for this. First, the manufacturer installed a regular cooling system, unable to create a more powerful airflow with a significant increase in the temperature of the GPU. In tests, increasing the core frequency by more than 3% leads to an increase in temperature followed by a reboot of the Windows system.

There are also complaints about the installed memory modules on the 8600 GT video card, which also have a response time limit of 1.6 nanoseconds, which significantly affects the data transfer rate between the video card and the motherboard bus during overclocking. Definitely - the cheapest solution in the budget niche under the NVIDIA logo is clearly not intended for overclocking.

The best alternative

The fastest video card based on the chip 8600 GT, whose price also beats records (2000 rubles), is considered a product of MSI. The well-known manufacturer completely changed the printed circuit board of the manufacturer NVIDIA (even the green color changed to red color). First of all, the power system was changed, the company's technologists installed their own PWM controllers and solid capacitors, thereby reducing heat generation. The memory modules were also replaced: the Samsung chips not only have a response time of about 1.2 nanoseconds, but also are capable of operating at higher frequencies.

Not the least role was played by the manufacturer's cooling system. A copper radiator with a large fan is quite capable of removing heat from the heating elements of the video card. It is worth noting that the manufacturer quite interestingly implemented the radiator mounting system. Clamping to the GPU is performed using a cross-shaped device behind the PCB, which is tightened by screws to the grille of the cooling system.

Testing the most powerful representative

Many owners note that in the regular work, the MSI video adapter based on the NVIDIA 8600 GT chip demonstrates good results both in synthetic tests and in games. A representative of the budget class in low settings with a screen resolution of 1280x1024 dpi shows excellent results in the games Quake 4, Call of Duty 2, FEAR, STALKER, World of Tanks and many other similar class. Yes, increasing the quality of drawing will definitely lead to a drop in the performance of the 8600 GT, but it's still about a representative of the budget class, an analog of integrated solutions.

Do not forget about the overclocking potential, which the MSI representative is capable of. Memory shows stable performance at 1660 MHz (19% increase), and the graphics core behaves well within 650 MHz (20% gain).

Turbo version in budget class

Platforms with a turbine in the cooling system have always been effective in terms of video card performance, but clearly not in the budget class. The same manufacturer MSI tried to present to the market an overclocked system with an installed Twin Turbo cooler. The manufacturer has achieved results worthy: 700 MHz - the frequency of the graphics core and 1600 MHz - memory operation. However, all owners in their reviews note that further overclocking of the 8600 GT is impossible.

For the graphics core, this is the limit after which it starts to display artifacts (multi-colored cubes) on the monitor, which hints at the user about the failure of the video card in the near future. And since the turbine is not capable of providing an increase in the potential of the video card by overclocking, there is no question of any water cooling system. This fact once again does not allow the device to leave the niche of the budget class. To improve the performance of this video adapter, many experts in their reviews generally recommend not to spend. If there is extra money, it's better to accumulate on a more productive video adapter class higher.

Proposals of other market representatives

The products based on the 8600 GT chipset are represented by many well-known manufacturers who, competing with each other, tried to make their product affordable, quiet and with good technical characteristics for gaming applications. However, to disperse all market participants had to completely modify the power system on the PCB and replace the inefficient cooling system of NVIDIA with a cooler of its own design. There are also offers with a passive cooling system. Such solutions were not overclocked and are positioned on the market as office products. Among the worthy video cards based on the 8600 GT chip, users in their reviews celebrate such brands: Gigabyte, ASUS, Gainward, Zotac, Palit and many other not less famous companies.

Finally

As you can see from the review, video cards based on the 8600 GT (512 MB) chip are too early to be written off, because their technical characteristics still outperform most existing integrated platforms (all solutions up to GMA 4000), which is 90% of the market. Yes, there are questions about overclocking efficiency, but we are talking about a representative of the budget class, the requirements for which are very modest: minimum user costs when buying, displaying images on the screen, and supporting low-resource games. With these tasks, the video adapter on the base of the 8600 GT chip successfully copes.