ASUS 8600 GT TOP

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ASUS 8600 GT TOP

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Max Slowik
Beth
ASUS
May. 12, 2008

Specifications

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Performance Summary

One thing's for sure: the 8600 GT has greatly improved since its launch. Compared to the results from last year's reference Albatron GT, this Asus card smoked it. FPS rates were all improved, with framerates of 130% with Prey, 140% with Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and 150% with F.E.A.R. Company of Heroes went from stop-motion animation to good.

At 1280x1024, the card's easily capable of playing most games with some degree of anti-aliasing, mostly 2X AA, which is pretty impressive for its price. Or you could just shoot for FPS and higher details, it won't disappoint.

Video playback is another area much improved on, with HQV scores in the 110+ area, compared to 88 points last year. The real hits were noise reduction and jaggies, with moire being an issue of the past.

Asus doesn't get all the credit, since NVIDIA has obviously put a huge effort into improving their drivers, but the factory overclock isn't hurting. But then, there's so much overclocking potential left over...

Power and Noise

Power consumption's right, too. It's not stellar, and overclocking seems to hit a limit because of that, but it's excellent compared to its more powerful counterparts.

Idle (integrated graphics): 70W
Idle (w/ GPU): 90W
CPU loaded, GPU idle: 150W
CPU and GPU loaded: 178W

Idle power consumption 20W
+ Load power consumption 28W
= Total power consumption 48W

There is a volume issue; although the fan can be driver-wise cranked up and down (it defaults to 40%) un-tweaked, it's loud; well, maybe not cacophonous, but noticeable. Fortunately, it's cool, so silence-seekers can easily make it a non-issue, and overclockers can push the fan to about 70% before it hits diminished returns--that is to say, no returns; running the fan over 70% yields no cooling benefits--the heatsink has its limits as well.

Overclocking

With about 30 watts of available power, above-average power regulation hardware, and a big heatsink, it's clear that this card, even with its factory overclock, still has quite a bit of overclocking headroom.

Using RivaTuner, I added another 145MHz to the core speed, almost a 25% overclock. The memory didn't budge over its default 2016MHz clock but then, it doesn't have to; stock 8600 GT memory is clocked at 1600MHz. This kind of speed boost more than narrows the gap between it and more expensive cards.

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Page 8 of 9

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Page 1: Introduction, The Card & Bundle
Page 2: Testing Methodology and Specifications
Page 3: Testing - HL2 Episode 1
Page 4: Testing - F.E.A.R.
Page 5: Testing - Company of Heroes
Page 6: Testing - Prey
Page 7: Testing - 3Dmark 06 & HQV
Page 8: Performance Summary, Power & Noise, and Overclocking
Page 9: Conclusion

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