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INTRODUCTION
NVIDIA’s release, back in November of 2006, of the first DirectX 10 series of graphics cards (the 8800GTX) has proven to be a performance king, shattering every benchmark of its competitors. Despite the great performance, many people were unable to swallow the price tag for such a card. Fortunately, a couple of month later, NVIDIA released the 8800GTS, which proved to be a video card that was almost as good but at a much cheaper price. Still, both the 8800GTX and 8800GTS were expensive for many gamers who needed a good card but did not wish to break their wallets. This leads us to April of 2007, almost six month after the 8800GTX’s release. NVIDIA has finally released mainstream graphics cards, the 8600GTS and 8600GT. They also brought to market a budget series of graphics cards, the 8500GT. NVIDIA has virtually covered the whole price range for consumers with their 8000 series cards and has brought DirectX 10 to the general public.
G84
The 8600GTS/8600GT is actually based the G84 core, a derived version of the G80 core. Rather than going through the detail of the core, I will simply direct you to the Bjorn3D’s G80 introduction on the technology and background.
The G84 comes with only 32 stream processors onboard is a big drop from the 128 stream processors in the G80. In addition, the memory interface has been dropped from 384-bit to 128-bit. To compensate for the loss of the stream processor and the memory interface, NVIDIA has clocked the 8600GTS at a higher clockspeed than the 8800GTX to keep up with the performance against other cards in the same price segment. The fact that the G84 can be clocked at a much higher clockspeed is partially due to the 80nm fabrication process as oppose to the 90nm processor used on the G80.
|
Feature/Specification |
GeForce 8800 GTS |
GeForce 8800 GTS |
GeForce 8600 GTS | GeForce 8600 GT |
|
Processor
|
G80
|
G80
|
G84
|
G84 |
|
Fabrication Process
|
90nm
|
90nm
|
80nm
|
80nm |
|
Stream Processors
|
128
|
96
|
32
|
32 |
|
Core Clock (MHz)
|
575
|
500
|
675
|
540 |
|
Shader Clock (MHz)
|
1350
|
1200
|
1450
|
1190 |
|
Memory Clock (MHz)
|
900
|
800
|
1000
|
700 |
|
Memory Amount
|
768MB
|
648MB or 320MB
|
256MB
|
256MB |
|
Memory Interface
|
384-bit
|
320-bit
|
128-bit
|
128-bit |
|
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)
|
86.4
|
64
|
32
|
22.4 |
|
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)
|
36.8
|
24
|
10.8
|
8.64 |
Despite the fact that the G84 is based on the G80 with fewer pipelines, there are actually a couple of improvements with the new G84 core. The first is the support for Dual-Link DVI HDCP. The HDCP is a requirement for high definition content for Vista. Vista requires that the graphics card, operating system, software, and playback devices all support HDCP in order to properly playback the contents. The older G80 cards do support HDCP but only in single-linked DVI, which means that it will only support maximum resolution of 1920x1200; while the newer G84 based cards support maximum resolution up to 2560x1600.
In addition to the HDCP support, the newer G84 also has updated PureVideo to further assist offload video rendering tasks from the CPU. This is a welcomed feature for the mainstream consumer.
Foxconn was kind enough to send us a GeForce 8600 GTS card for review. Unfortunately, the sample arrived at my door step the day after the release date of the 8600GTS, thus I didn’t have enough time to review the card. That’s fine as it gave me more time to play around with the card. Let’s take a look at the card.
FOXCONN
Foxconn is the registered trade name of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. Hon Hai is a global leader in providing mechanical and electromechanical solutions to the communications, consumer, and computer industries. The world's largest manufacturer of PC connectors and enclosures, Hon Hai is also one of the world's largest manufacturers of cable assemblies and motherboards - almost 40 million motherboards having been produced in 2005.Founded in 1974, and listed on the Taiwan stock exchange in 1991, Hon Hai has well in excess for 180,000 employees, is the largest private sector company in Taiwan, and is the largest exporter from mainland China. Market capitalization exceeds $18 billion USD. Sales in 2005 exceeded $28 billion USD.
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Disclosure: Bjorn3D review products are sometimes provided by the vendors who manufacture the hardware. Review samples are in some cases retained by the reviewer that reviews the product for further comparison to other similar products. Companies that buy ads on the site do not get any special treatment when it comes to reviews and any ad-sales are not connected to the reviews or the review scores.