Customer Reviews

XFX PVT84JUDD3 GeForce 8600GT XXX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Ready Video Card (Dual DVI/S-Video)

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have Dell Dimension 8400 with single core P4 3.6Ghz/3GB RAM. This card works great in it. The 3DMark score is 4100 if you care (I didn't, I purchased it b/c my old card started giving me problems). When not under the load I can't say I hear any extra noise coming from it. Same under the load, but under the load my other fans get loud so maybe they just drown the fan on this card.

I bought expecting to be able to play games at medium quality. Boy, was I wrong. Let my first let readers know the complete specifications of my sub-$600 gaming/programming/linux rig:

***Motherboard: ABIT Fatal1ty AN9 32X
***Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.3GHz
***Memory: Corsair XMS 2GB
***Optical drive:Asus LightScribe 18x Drive

People have been trashing this video card all over the net ever since it came out. One particular reviewer said he didn't even know what type of buyer would buy it. Well, here's the answer: those of us on a who aren't much into spending over $600 on a single card alone (cheers to you if you can do that).

Anyways, if you want a short review, read the following sentence:
Bioshock (hottest game around) @ 1024*768 @ The HIGHEST possible settings without ever seeing a stutter.

If you want an inexpensive video card that will last you for years, this one's it. The reason I say this is because just as when Doom, Half-Life 2 and Farcry set the bar for hardware system requirements on 2004 and seeing how those who upgraded then are still able to play recent games without bigger upgrades (that being a dual core processor), expect this one to last even more than those good ol' 6800GT did in 2003/4. If Bioshock and Rainbow Six: Vegas run at the High settings on this puppy (both running on top of the Unreal 3 engine), expect Crysis (Crytek2 engine) and Half-Life Episode Two and Three to run without any issues (expect Crytek, Unreal and the Source engine to replicate their 2004's success).

Every game I've thrown at it, I've played at the highest setting (although I'm aware the Flight Simulator X can bring down even the hottest SLi-powered 8800GTX in the block). What's most important to me is to know that the Unreal 3 engine runs perfectly because it's a prime star of the current HD-generation games. I'll be even happier when the Crysis demo comes out later this month (I'll update then!).

A friend of mine has had a 6600GT (alongside 2GB of Patriot DDR2 Ram and an AMD X2 3800+ 2.0ghz processor) for over 3 years now and he can _still_ manage to play Rainbow Six: Vegas and Bioshock (Unreal 3 engine on both; note: Vegas needs a better computer than Bioshock). The importance of this that with this information I'm sure this 8600GT will work for at least as long as his has been working. Heck, Big Daddies bow down to this puppy ( ;)).

Note that the XXX stands for overclocked version (620mhz). That means that it's better than the regular 8600GT by quite a bit and that it can rival other brand's 8600GTS cards (not XFX's own 8600GTS XXX, though).

Because of the nature of powerful videocards, I'd recommend placing a cheapPCI Blower below the card. That'll ensure it doesn't ever get too hot.

Oh, and it works wonders on Linux (Nvidia graphics on linux put Ati to shame). =)

* The good: This card performs MUCH better than I had expected. I hesitantly bought it for my cheapie backup computer which is a $300 SR2020NX Compaq from BestBuy. 1st I spent $50 for 2Gb of RAM which helped it, but not much. The only other mod is this XFX 8600GT video card, and WOW is my 1st impression. It plays Quake 4 very smoothly and it's beautiful. I just tried Enemy Territory - Quake Wars (Demo), and it plays smoothly as well.

* The bad: It is a bit noisy, and although it doesn't bother me a bit, some will complain after being used to their on-board video chip unit which doesn't NEED a fan.

* Overall this one is a winner and I recommend it without exception.

WOW - I MEAN WOW
runs cool, very small , very powerfull , very overclockable , very inexpensive , made by xfx , double lifetime warranty , direct x 10 , built in physics processor ( quantum effects ) , better than a 7900gs or gt below 1280 x 1024 , very nice to sli with , low power draw , great for low amp psu's

FEAR - everything maxed out 1280x1024 including AA , 55fps
Lost Planet DX10 - medium - high settings , AA off , 30 FPS snow , 36 FPS Cave (1280 x 960)
DIRT demo - 40fps - everything on ultra including AA on Nvidia Control Panel , 800x600
Need For Speed Carbon - 37 fps everything including AA maxed out

System Specs
Amd athon x2 4200+ 65w @ 2.4ghz
2gb ram ddr2 667 4 4 4 12
asus m2n-sli deluxe
xfx geforce 8600gt xxx @ 690mhz core , 850 mem (using nvidia ntune)

This is an outstanding mid-range performance card: It's reasonably priced, reasonably powerful, well-supported and stable, and runs quiet. It's well made and feels solid; no cheap components here. The overclocking of the XXX edition and the GDDR3 means this card is notably faster than other 8600s.

It's easy to set up, unlike higher-end cards: no special 6-pin PCIe power connector needed, no PCIe 2.0 slot required, no worrying if your power supply has enough juice to drive it, no worrying if that extra long high-end card will fit across your MicroATX mainboard.

Very few other cards will give this level of performance as a straight-forward drop-in on your average consumer desktop PC. Of course, if you're willing to upgrade other components, deal with cooling issues, etc, you can get higher performance for a higher price. But for this effort-level and this price, this card is hands-down the best.

This 8600GT won't run the newest FPS games at their highest settings (but WILL run most at reasoanable settings), hence my calling it "mid-range".

I'm a techie and I've built a number of homebrew PC rigs, so it takes a lot for me to be impressed. This card is impressive, and two XFX cards I've now owned (this one and a new Nvidia9800GT) lead me to believe that XFX makes the best PC video cards on the market today. Highly recommended.

Let me start by taking care of a couple worries you might have from some other reviews.

First, the card runs just fine with a 300W power supply. No decrease in performance, no fried card or PS. I even found a comparison showing that the card draws LESS power than the 300W-approved 7600GS I replaced with it. However, I have not OCed it further than the factory OC, myself.

Secondly, I think the fan noise is a matter of personal taste. Yes, it's sort of loud -- but I think it will mainly bother people used to pre-builts, vs. people who build their own and stuff in a lot of fans to be safe. It's going to be almost silent to anyone who crammed one of the old AMD inferno monsters with five fans just to keep the thing from melting down, and loud to someone running, say, one of the nearly silent new HP prebuilts.

Finally, yes, it appears to run fairly hot. I got 61C idle during one test. But the CPU and case were still running cool, and I haven't seen any problems with the card, so I'll just not stress about it unless it becomes an actual problem. It could very well just have been an anomaly with the test software I ran.

Now, I'm going to repeat what a lot of others have said, and I mean it sincerely: This card has taken EVERYTHING I've thrown at it, and performed MUCH better than I expected. First, I tried HL2, Episode One. (Since I'm finally getting around to playing it -- darn you, TF2!) I maxed everything, and I mean everything, and it was smooth as silk. The only thing I ended up doing was reducing the resolution a notch, but that was because the aspect ratio made things look a little short and squat.

But I expected that kind of performance from that game. So, hey, it's a DX10 card, why not give DX10 a shot? Even though I'd heard horrible things about DX10 performance hits. So Bioshock it was. Um. Man. I turned on DX10 effects, maxed it to the resolution of my LCD monitor (1680x1050) and went nuts with the effects. I mean, I was trying to put the beatdown on this card, and see how much I had to back everything down. Now, it wasn't without some stuttering -- but it was playable. I'm guessing 20-30 FPS on average, but not a slideshow by any means. Yeah, I'll back it down some for actual play, but that it even ran that well got me pretty pumped.

But c'mon, we all know where I had to go next. This pup seriously needed to jump through some real hoops. Flaming hoops. With spikes on the insides. That's right -- the Crysis demo. I reinstalled it, and let it set the defaults. 1280x1024, all settings at medium. The only thing I changed was to go from windowed to full screen. And it played as smoothly as any gamer could want, PLUS was absolutely gorgeous. I soon stopped even thinking about the graphics (even the grass, and the water, and... MAN it looked great!) and got into the game. I'll be buying it for sure.

It was as soon as a got into a couple of firefights in Crysis, that I knew I had to write a review of this card. It's performed beyond of all my expectations.

And so you don't think it's all because I was testing it on some supercharged 'puter, here are my specs:

Wimpy 300W PSU. 2G RAM. Vista Home Premium 32-bit. Athlon 64 X2 4600+ at 2.40ghz. Oh, and a Creative X-Fi Extreme Music, so there's another little bit of power being drawn from that 300W PSU. Toshiba TekBright 20", so I luckily already had the DVI cables.

And yeah, I even got the unadvertised Company of Heroes in the bundle. Lucky, I guess,

I haven't been this happy with a hardware purchase in a long time. Highly recommended.

[...]

get this one! don't bother with the 8800 at twice the price. i am running two digital Dell 20-inch 24-bit monitors flawlessly. note: i am NOT a gamer, so i can't comment on their ability to display gaming video. i do however push them with digital video editing, 3D graphic modeling and large graphic editing, and 256MB seems to be more than adequate running at 1600x1200 32-bit. also, this card was properly recognized by Vista Ultimate and the drivers seem solid. buy it!

This is no 8800 series card, but it definitely performs. With most games like Bioshock, World in Conflict, Tiger Woods 08, Battlefield 2142, I can play with max video settings with out any slowdown. The only game I had trouble with running full video settings is Company of Heroes witch actually has known issues with the nvidia cards in general with DirectX 10 capabilities. Also It's almost 3X cheaper than the 8800 series cards. Being overclocked it's peformance matches the GTS version without needing to be hooked up to additional power sources. It's pretty funny that the only game that the card has issues with so far at the highest settings is the game it came with (Company of Heroes). Also its nice and thin and wont take up two spaces in your case, which is important for my already tight case. I'm running this card with Core 2 Duo @3.0ghz, 2gb of ram, with vista home premium. The card gets a Windows Vista Experience rating of 5.9 in the Graphics subscore and 5.6 in the Gaming Graphics subscore.

This video card have almost the same performance than a more expense 8600GTS, I try this with 3dmark 2006 with 2GB ram and amd 4000+ single core and i have 4300 3d mark points; the 8600gts gave me 4600 3dmark point, so is not necessary expend 35 bucks more jus for +10% of performance.

This is a great cheaper (around $100) 8000 series card. Only problem is I had to upgrade the power supply on my new HP. This card requires a 350W or greater power supply, which is a requirement not listed anywhere on this page. Also, if you are running Windows Vista, just download the drivers and software directly from the XFXForce.com website and don't even mess with the CD included in the box, it doesn't have the latest drivers on it.