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

List Price: $164.99 Discount Price: $92.89

Features:

• PCI-Express SLI-ready video card with 256 MB of 128 bit DDR3 memory
• Full support for Microsoft DirectX 10.0 Shader Model 4.0
• PCI-Express and Open GL 2.0 support
• NVIDIA SLI Technology allows two graphics cards to run simultaneously
• Dual Link DVI for high resolution monitors (up to 2560x1600)

Customer Reviews:

Fantastic Card, You Won't Regret It [Posted on 2008-04-29]
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.

[...]

Next Gen graphics for the price of a next gen game. [Posted on 2008-04-29]
Got it for $60.

Fan can run a bit quick and lets off a decent hum but other than that it is great.

exelente [Posted on 2008-05-02]
la tarjeta es justo lo que esperaba, buena marca, la velocidad muy buena, y ademas trae un juego original! la mejor opcion por el precio menos de 100..muy complacido.

Great video card... [Posted on 2008-05-08]
This an excellent card. Works great with vista.
two DVI outputs for two monitors and SLI ready.
Nothing else to ask for.

100% Recommended.

Loud. Really, really loud. [Posted on 2008-05-11]
While the 8600GT itself performs very well, next time I'm avoiding XFX and spending a little more. Why? The fan on this card is so amazingly loud. I've been building my own computers for 15 years and have owned plenty of video cards with fans, but this one takes the cake. I can hear it from the room next door. I have to turn it off at night to get sleep. Now I'm looking at another $25-$30 for an aftermarket cooler (which XFX support suggests). I should have paid the extra money up from for another card and saved myself the hassle.

Click here for more details and discount information...