Testing

For graphics card testing we run through a series of synthetic and real world benchmarks and compare the results to previous cards that we have tested. The tests we run are as follows:

3Dmark06, 3Dmark05, 3Dmark03, 3Dmark01, FEAR benchmark, X3 Reunion benchmark, HL2: Lost Coast benchmark and two different resolutions of our own BF2142 demo (1600*1200 & 1280*1024).

To achieve as accurate a score as possible all tests were run 3 times and the average of the results was taken.

The other hardware I used to test this card was as follows:

Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.7ghz
OCZ Special Ops Urban Edition 6400 @ 900mhz
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
Antec Earthwatts 500w

The drivers were pre-release drivers from the provided CD.

Overclocking

To properly test a graphics card you don't know its true performance unless you overclock it, so that's exactly what we did. While it did take a while for me to find some overclocking software that works (nothing officially supports the 8600 yet), I eventually settled on ATI Tool (I tried RivaTuner and Ntune as well). With a little tweaking and fiddling I was able to crank the 8600 up to 640mhz on the core and 835mhz on the memory; not too shabby.

All tests were run with the card in stock and overclocked states to ascertain the performance gained from overclocking as well as showing what the card is capable of doing with factory settings.

NB. The card was capable of holding this overclock without the aide of any active cooling. However, I placed a single 120mm fan above the card to play safe.

Results

The 8600 does fairly well in the synthetic benchmarks, falling just slightly behind the x1950 Pro in some and beating it by a little in others.

In the gaming benchmarks the 8600 isn't quite as impressive, falling behind the x1950 Pro in everything but BF2142. However it does manage to stay hot on it's heels apart from in HL2: Lost Coast.

The 8600GT performed admirably in these tests. For a card that costs around £30 less than the second cheapest card there - x1950 Pro - it keeps up very well indeed.