Installation

Installation was no problem at all. The rear screws nor the front heatsink caused any clearance issues. Also, one plus point of the 8600GT is that it doesn't require a 6pin PCI-E cable to power it so cable management is a little easier.

Click to enlarge

Testing

Testing this GPU was like any other. I ran it through several synthetic tests, and several gaming ones and took down the scores before comparing them to similar cards.

The tests I ran were as follows: 3Dmark06, 3Dmark05, 3Dmark03, FEAR, Half Life 2: Lost Coast, X3 Reunion and Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions.

The settings used for all benchmarks were:

3Dmark0X

1. All 3Dmark tests were run at default settings.

Half Life 2

1. All settings at maximum with no AA or AF.
2. All settings at max with 6xAA and 16xAF. Both at 1280*1024.

X3 Reunion

1. Settings at "default".
2. Full detail with 6xAA and 16xAF at 1280*1024.

FEAR

1. Both main settings at maximum.
2. Both settings at max with resolution at 1600*1200.

Lost Planet

1. All settings at full, no AA or AF, HDR at "low", 1280*720.
2. All settings at full, AAxC16XQ, AFx16, HDR at "high", 1280*720.
3. Same as 2, 1600*1200.

The drivers used for this review were the latest (at the time) ones from the nVidia website; 163.71.

All benchmarks were run 3 times and the average score was used for the results.

The test setup used was as follows:

Conroe E6600 @ 3.156ghz
MSI P6N-Diamond
OCZ Flex PC2-6400
Maxtor Diamondmax 20
Silver Power 600w
BFG PhysX card with custom cooler
Auzentech Prelude

I will compare this card to the XFX Fatal1ty 8600GT which was reviewed recently.

Overclocking

As with previous 8600s I have reviewed, this one overclocked very well indeed. Using the ever usefully ATI Tool I was able to take the core from it's stock of 620mhz all the way to 780mhz. However, this was a little unstable so I brought it back to 750 to allow a memory overclock from the stock of 900mhz to 1000mhz. The memory was able to hit 1050 but would artifact like crazy. Perhaps some better RAM sinks would improve this.