Currently the Nvidia 8600GT series cards are the most power per penny in the Direct X 10 catagory. Nvidia 8 series are all designed for the new Direct X 10 availble in Windows Vista. That being said clearly if you are not using Vista you can probably save some money by sticking to Direct X 9 cards like Nvidias 7 series. Nvidia 8 series is also not availble in AGP, they have moved to PCI Express only.
The card we tested is an XFX 8600GT with 256MB DDR 3 memory and a 620Mhz core clock. These are generally availble for about $140. This unit comes with a nice looking heatsink / fan combo with graphics painted on it, Perfect for flare on your custom rig. The card itself has 2 DVI outputs one of which with the included adaper will convert to VGA out. We also recieved a full copy of Company of Heros game and the DX10 upgrade for Company of Heros to try out our new card in full gory. Installation is easy as usual and without problems, just put in the card, boot, install driver, and reboot.
We tested this card how we primarily test all our cards. Test bed always includes 3Dmark03, we don't use 3Dmark higher than 03 for the time being as newer versions give some cards certain advantges in functionality. 3Dmark 03 levels the field for us to test raw power on a range of cards all the way back to 2003 on an even field.
Once the test started running we found ourselves pleased, but not thrilled. The score were high but not exceptional. Overall scores post in the 12500 range a meager 25% higher than an old 6800GT we really expected more. Visual Quality was very good, but not exceptional. Under DX10 in Company of Heros visual quality and effects were impressive, however framerates seemed to fall lower than we wanted to see often. In DX9 games like Phantasy Star Universe frame rates seemed to stay higher. This card seemed to have the same problems all Nvidia cards seem to have in high res, screen modes above 1280 X 1024 took an extreme performance hit rendering these modes usless in video games. In videos, and 2D the card of course performed with no hicups in any screen mode and visual in this modes were spot on with smooth, and crisp colors.
Overall this card ranks as a dissappointment, but gone are the days when new video card releases would stomp old video cards by two. With the price tags they put on these thing though you would think they did. However we did learn one thing here. Don't even bother with 8800 series cards for $300-$700 you will be disappointed.
Graphics 2D: 4
Graphics 3D: 3
Value: 5
Performance: 4
Overall: 4 of 5