NVIDIA's low-cost solution is a video adapter based on the 8600 GT; it has strengthened its position in the budget class in the market of our country for a long time. The fact is that the video card is in demand when building office solutions, multimedia centers and home computers for work. The characteristics of the video card, review, testing and reviews of the owners will tell a lot of interesting things about this device in this article.
Computer Market Trends
Recently, integrated video systems have risen significantly in price on the world market, because in addition to supporting video on the motherboard, the technology should be implemented on the core of the central processor. If all these requirements are converted into a monetary equivalent, it turns out that for the integrated video adapter you need to pay about 5,000 thousand rubles. Naturally, prudent users will have a desire to save on such costs. Buying a video card based on the NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT is just such a solution (the market price is 3,000 rubles).
Unlike the products of the competitor AMD, this video adapter has full manufacturer support, respectively, work with new operating systems is guaranteed. Many owners in their reviews note that the video card is well defined at the driver level in Windows 10 (64-bit). This is a serious argument for all potential buyers.
Specifications for the 8600 GT Chipset
And if the reader thinks that he is facing the weakest representative of the budget computer market for video cards, then he is very mistaken. The NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT video adapter supplanted newer chips only thanks to the manufacturer’s policy: new technologies, increased frequency of the graphics core, and the like. In fact, the representative of the budget class (albeit at low settings) is able to cope with many popular games. First of all, the key to this is the technical characteristics of the video card:
- G84 GPU is built on 80-nanometer technology and has 289 million transistors per chip;
- the nominal processor frequency is 540 MHz;
- DDR3 memory runs on a 128-bit bus with a frequency of 1400 MHz and has on board 256 and 512 megabytes (the circuit board supports an increase in volume up to 1 GB);
- unified shader processors - 32 (like most modern integrated systems);
- On the 8600 GT, full support for analog and digital video is implemented, including VIVO (some manufacturers removed this interface on their own initiative).
The implementation of modern technology
Performance in games is provided not only by the memory bus bandwidth and the GPU, but also by a set of proprietary technologies that are implemented at the hardware level in the Gifors 8600 GT. And there is something to be proud of:
- support for working in SLI mode;
- maximum texture size 8192x8192 pixels per inch;
- support for cubic environment map (CEM);
- full-screen anti-aliasing (FSAA) up to 16xQ with a maximum color depth of 32 bits;
- hardware decoder mpeg2, H.264, VC1 and WMV;
- support for CUDA, PhysX, DXVA, HDTV and the ability to work with 4K monitors (the latter parameter is not advertised due to problems associated with connecting some brands of monitors).
However, when comparing the characteristics of the video card with the current versions of the products, the user still does not find support for the digital output with the HDMI audio stream signal and the very popular DisplayPort interface. True, there is an optional implementation of HDCP, but it requires a special converter to work. The 8600 GT video adapter and textures with an indexed color palette do not support, which is the reason for the inoperability of some new high-performance games.
Manufacturer policy in the global market
The 8600 GT graphics card, presented in a budget niche, can be not only under the logos of famous brands, as is often accepted. Demanded devices are sometimes delivered from the factory to the market, bypassing intermediaries. The purchase of a product under the NVIDIA logo guarantees the owner that in front of him is a truly original video card that has not been finalized by anyone.
Judging by the numerous reviews of the owners, performance is the main characteristic of a video card in the world market. And the original products of the manufacturer always have the most affordable price and decent quality. We offer you to get to know the product better.
Introducing the Original NVIDIA Graphics Card
In a product from the manufacturer itself, a video card based on the 8600 GT chipset, performance characteristics are considered to be as balanced as possible for efficient operation in normal mode. First of all, this is the silent operation of the device, which provides a proprietary cooling system from NVIDIA. However, according to the owners in the media, the graphics adapter has the ability to overheat when overclocking the GPU and memory bus.
The problem lies in placing the power management system at the back of the circuit board. Not only are the power circuits not covered by a radiator, they also transfer their heat to the radiator of the graphic chip. If you look closely at other products based on the NVIDIA 8600 GT from other manufacturers, you will find that the power controllers are transferred to the front of the video card or have their own cooling system in the form of passive radiators.
Video Card Performance Improvement
According to the owners of the original motherboards from NVIDIA, overclocking is undesirable for the 8600 GT chip. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, the manufacturer installed a standard cooling system, unable to create a more powerful air flow with a significant increase in the temperature of the GPU. In tests, an increase in core frequency of more than 3% leads to an increase in temperature, followed by a restart of the Windows system.
There are complaints about the installed memory modules on the printed circuit board of the 8600 GT video adapter, which also have a response time limit of 1.6 nanoseconds, which significantly affects the data transfer speed between the video card and the motherboard bus during overclocking. Definitely - the cheapest solution in a budget niche under the NVIDIA logo is clearly not intended for overclocking.
Best alternative
The fastest video card based on the 8600 GT chip, the price of which also breaks records (2,000 rubles), is considered a product of MSI. The well-known manufacturer completely modified the printed circuit board of the manufacturer NVIDIA (even the green color changed to red). First of all, the power system underwent changes, the company's technologists installed their own PWM controllers and solid-state capacities, thereby reducing heat generation. The memory modules were also replaced: Samsung chips not only have a response time of the order of 1.2 nanoseconds, but are also able to operate at higher frequencies.
Not the last role was played by the manufacturer's proprietary cooling system. A copper radiator with a large fan is quite efficiently able to remove heat from the heating elements of the video card. It is worth noting that the manufacturer quite interestingly implemented a radiator mounting system. The clip to the GPU is carried out using a cross-shaped device behind the printed circuit board, which is pulled together by screws to the grill of the cooling system.
Testing the most powerful representative
Many owners note that in regular operation, the MSI video adapter based on the NVIDIA 8600 GT chip shows good results both in synthetic tests and in games. The representative of the budget class in low settings with a screen resolution of 1280x1024 dpi shows excellent results in the games Quake 4, Call of Duty 2, FEAR, STALKER, World of Tanks and many others of this class. Yes, an increase in the quality of drawing will definitely lead to a drop in the performance of the 8600 GT, but we are still talking about a representative of a budget class, an analogue of integrated solutions.
Do not forget about the overclocking potential that the representative of MSI is capable of. The memory shows stable performance at a frequency of 1660 MHz (an increase of 19%), and the graphics core behaves with dignity within 650 MHz (an increase of 20%).
Low cost turbo version
Platforms with a turbine in the cooling system have always been effective in terms of video card performance, but obviously not in the budget class. The same manufacturer, MSI, tried to introduce the market to an overclocked system with an installed Twin Turbo cooler. The manufacturer achieved decent results: 700 MHz - the frequency of the graphics core and 1600 MHz - the memory. However, all owners in their reviews note that further acceleration of the 8600 GT is impossible.
For the graphics core, this is the limit after which it starts to display artifacts (multi-colored cubes) on the monitor, which hints to the user about the failure of the video card in the near future. And since the turbine is not able to provide an increase in the potential of the video card through acceleration, then there can be no talk of any water cooling system. This fact once again does not allow the device to leave the niche of the budget class. Many experts generally recommend not to splurge on improving the performance of this video adapter. If there is extra finance, it’s better to save up for a higher-performance video adapter with a higher class.
Offers of other market representatives
Products based on the 8600 GT chipset are represented by many well-known manufacturers who, competing with each other, tried to make their product affordable, quiet and with good technical specifications for gaming applications. However, for overclocking, all market participants had to completely modify the power system on the printed circuit board and replace the inefficient NVIDIA cooling system with a cooler of its own design. There are also offers with a passive cooling system. Such solutions have not been overclocked and are marketed as office products. Among the worthy video cards based on the 8600 GT chip, users mention such brands in their reviews: Gigabyte, ASUS, Gainward, Zotac, Palit and many other equally well-known companies.
Finally
As you can see from the review, video cards based on the 8600 GT chip (512 MB) are too early to write off, because their technical characteristics still surpass the majority of existing integrated platforms (all solutions up to GMA 4000), and this is 90% of the market. Yes, there are questions regarding the efficiency of overclocking, but we are talking about a representative of the budget class, the requirements for which are very modest: the minimum cost to the user when buying, displaying the image on the screen and support for undemanding games. A video adapter based on the 8600 GT chip successfully copes with these tasks.