Albatron 8600GTS

INTRODUCTION

Back in November 2006 everything changed with the release of a new style of video card. I say new style because it left behind everything we have come to expect from video cards at the time. Pixel and texture shaders were replaced with stream processors, no longer would you have to choose between Anti-aliasing and HDR, and picture quality would never be the same from the green team. The 8800 series had arrived and it brought with it a great many advancements in video card technology of which the most heralded was DirectX 10. It also brought with it a hefty price tag many people could not justify spending on a single component for their computer. So for some time these advancements were out of reach for many of us as we gazed upon amazing scores of 3DMark and watched as frame rates climbed ever higher. Well, now it’s time for the rest of us to have some fun! Enter the 8600 series GPU from Nvidia.

8600GTS

There was much speculation and rumors were running rampant leading up to the release of the 8600 GTS/GT on April 17^th and for good reason. This would be the card that would bring many features of the 8800 series including DirectX 10 to the masses. Graphic card companies jumped at the chance to produce their own version of this mighty mid-range card. Many great reviews have gone into detail about the architecture of the card so I will refer you here and here so we can get to the good stuff!

Today we will be reviewing Albatron’s entry into the next-gen midrange line with their 8600 GTS offering. As shown by the specs this card is built upon the Nvidia reference right down to the cooler used on the card. This is not a bad thing as Nvidia have produced some rock solid layouts over the past few generations of cards.

The main points many people will focus on is the number of stream processors and the interface of the memory. With 32 SP’s and a 128-bit interface many people will be quick to write this card off as an under performer. But take a look at the speed of that memory, 2000 MHz! It is also worth mentioning that this card is built upon a completely redesigned core which is very different then what we have come to expect in the past. What this means is that as new games come out that take advantage of this architecture it is reasonable to expect that this card may perform better with time. But we are not here to speculate about future performance we are here to put this card to the test on today’s latest and greatest.