DH Review: MSI and BFG 8600 GTS

Zardon

Read the Review Here
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The product(s) that Nvidia and its partners are launching today is designed to bring DirectX 10 features to the mainstream market, in addition to this – this range introduce some quite astounding new video features which are not present on even the top end 8800 series. Top all this with an updated driver which features over 400 bug fixes since the 98 series driver and we have an interesting review ahead of us. So, furnished with overclocked edition GTS cards from MSI and BFG (with more coming this week from other makers) let’s see if the 8600 can deliver the goods.

bug77

Great performance? I like the irony.
The 8600GT is about as fast as a 7600GT and the 8600GTS is on par (at best) with a 7900GS. I think this says a lot about unified shader being more efficient than dedicated ones.

Zardon

I think its a pretty great card for the consumer on a budget, you certainly wont be getting a better gaming/media card for HD content at the price.

josh2thad

Looks like i will be waiting for either a price drop on the 8800GTX or ATI's response, because for $200 those results just dont please me.

WhO_KnOwS

Ok, you guys seriously need to think this one through. For the price of $200 you not only get a card that loses only to the 8800 series and ATI's X1k XTX series, but as Zardon pointed out, you get a dedicated HD decoding chip as well. Plus, the card runs cool and is virtually noiseless!
Not sure what you were expecting. Judging from your replies you expected 8800 class framerates at half the price - not gonna happen any time soon I'm afraid.

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bug77

The 8600GT offers the performace of a previous generation mid-range card. If that's not disappointing, I don't know what is. On top of that, 128bit memory bus, means a 30-40% performance hit when using AA. As for video decoding, anyone serious enough about movies has a standalone player (costs about as much a high-end video card).

I think nvidia meant DX10 to be the selling point of these cards so they didn't bother bumping DX9 performance. Unfortunately, DX10 now is nothing more than a checkbox/nice sticker on a cardboard box.

And if ATI launches the 2900XT at USD400 MSRP, suddenly the 8600 series becomes even less attractive.

Anyway, the review is good (aside from missing comaprison to other cards), but the products is bad. And I couldn't find the new AA modes put to the test in any review. Do these cards even support that?

Vampyromaniac

I wonder if this HD acceleration is useful only toward BD and HDDVD, or if it also helps in other formats.

And do the 8800's have no acceleration at all, or just a slower version of PureVideo?
" this range introduce some quite astounding new video features which are not present on even the top end 8800 series"

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WhO_KnOwS

The HD acceleration is helpful at decoding any h.264 encoded file - Quicktime files come to mind here.
Also, the 8600 is the first series to have a dedicated chip for decoding media, before most of the work was done via the gpu.

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Veridian3

Just to elaborate on what who_knows has just said. The 8800 series only accelerates part of the video process (Motion Compensation and Deblocking) the 8600 adds Bitstream processing and inverse transform acceleration which completes the 4 aspects of the video acceleration "pipeline".

Erroneus

Well it's an ok card, but the real problem is that there is no use for DX10 now and the way it's priced, it's not that good a deal comparing to other dx9 cards.

It would be great to see some DX10 benches soon and you got to wonder if the market is going to "shift" a bit, due to the 8900 series and the r600, when the dx10 games are released. If thats the case, the 8600 gts has to lower it's prices a lot to say competive.

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Vampyromaniac

Hmm, I would assume the Quicktime software then would have to support the hardware acceleration for that to work, right?

I also wonder if the acceleration is codec-specific, or if it is more broad. ie. if it would accelerate x264 video as well as h.264... assuming you would have a player that supports the acceleration (if it's required.)

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Tipstaff

Honestly, I am very disappointed in both the 8600GTS and 8600GT. I've been going through Anandtech's 8600GTS/8600GT review HERE (page 5 and on for comparisons), and I was really surprised at how they both performed against AMDs ATI X1950Pro and GT. The only game that either card outperformed those 2 AMD cards was in Oblivion. In everything else the X1950 Pro was ahead.

It may be a good card, but it is still very disappointing when you compare it to a AMD's "technically" last gen DX9 X1950 Pro.

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Veridian3

I cant help but feel that people are being a little short sighted on this product. Considering the very similar prices the 8600 is a much better deal for buying a card to last a while. Advantages it has over the X1950 (and gf7)are:

HDCP over dual link (no other card does this)
Full video acceleration (just try playing a 1080p disc on a X1950 with any reasonably priced cpu, again no other card does this)
DX10 features (the ability to enable DX10 features in future games which the X1950/GF7 will not support. All cards will have to reduce the detail levels for these titles but the 86 will still look better)
Mad overclocking which takes the card past X1950 performance
Better dvd display quality (higher HQV benchmark scores)

There is probably other things that i could come up with but really not everything revolves arround current games when choosing which product to buy.

Erroneus

Well they are all fine features, but if you dont use these features, which I'm gonna bet A LOT of people dont, the 8600gts really doesn't have that much to offer right now.

Yeah it's properly a great dx10 card, but it's dx9 speed isn't good enough from my point of view and with the prices 8800 gts 320 has dropped to, it's not that interesting.

Maybe when the DX10 games are out and when the card has dropped, lets say around 30 $, it would properly be a great buy.

So who is this card for? Well I would say people who need a new gfx right here and now, doesnt wanna spend a lot of money and doesnt plan to change their gfx card in within the next year.

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IvanV

The cards do have all these advantages, but, by the time we are able to have real use of them, their gaming performance will be too low, and those who boy them now will want new cards. So, it looks as if all these features are really a marketing trick. A quarter of 8800GTX's shading units isn't going to cut it in the future. 8800GTX isn't really going to cut it forever. 9700Pro was unbelievable when it came out, and it's completely inferior compared to the last DX9 cards.

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tastyweat

Hey,

I do like your reviews guys, but one niggly thing. You hardly ever compare to other graphics cards.

For example this new card is in the same price range as the X1950Pro and 7950GT, so would be good to see a comparison including these cards & possibly and 8800gtx or similar to show just how they campare to their bigger brother.

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bug77

An 8600GTS cannot touch an X1950Pro or a 7950GT for raw power. If you want AA, things get worse.

This is part of the problem with people saying these cards are good (though most agree they're not): nobody would advise you to buy a 7600GT and very few would recommend a 7900GS these days.

Zardon

Yes we do, we just dont do this on launch sometimes as due to time pressure and constrants my biggest concern is getting accurate and detailed analysis on the cards in question, after all by now we have enough reviews up on DH and other sites that you can see how a card will perform in a specific game. We can however tackle something like this at a later date (perhaps even the next 8600 review we publish). I understand not many of you guys comprehend how little time we actually get with these cards. We did however approach something very few sites have done to this stage and that was detail results with HD content, which is a good selling aspect of these boards.

I think comparing a 8600 GTS with a 8800GTX is rather silly. they are cards targeted at totally difference price points and end user. It is a lot of resources within our reviewing team to just show huge gains if you spend £150-200 more. We all know this.

Nonetheless your feedback is appreciated and while some of my replies are not ideal - perhaps you understand a little more why launch articles arent 400 page books covering every aspect possible.

Zardon

Again you make the same point and again im going to dispute that. You have to understand that for someone who wants to game at 720p on a limited budget and wants to use his/her pc for High definition playback via a tv etc, while having the option to game at med res, these cards are really good value for money. Especially considering the overclockability.

If you are looking for a high resolution eye candy gaming experience then you go for a high range gaming card which costs upwards of £200 more. Its just common sense. No one will be buying these cards to game at insane resolutions with a ton of AA or AF. These cards are marketed to a specific sector which we have detailed in the review accurately and I personally stand by the gold awards. I feel people expect 8800 performance for half the price, and lets get real that isnt going to happen. And what about the video acceleration? none of the older cards have this. This is going to help someone on a cheap/mid range cpu to watch 1080p content via their pc.

Now let's move on please, you made your point, none of the staff agree. however im sure others agree with you, which is fine, so lets hear other viewpoints. However let us remember one thing. The price.

bug77

I have to say I don't. Is Nvidia/ATI demanding you publish the review the day the cards are announced/launched? Cause that would explain a lot.

Zardon

No one demands anything, however in this case we wanted to get a good review up in time for people being able to buy them online. We have a strong following on DH and people want to see our articles. The review has gotten great feedback so far so it has pleased many.

We are following up this article with another one shortly which will tackle other aspects of the hardware. I am sure you won't like it either, but you never do.

Now as I said, lets move on to some other people with questions, responses.

bug77

Hm, I thought I already posted this.
I don't think the review is bad, I think the cards themselves are weak. You guys do a good job, I'm just nitpicking hoping to make it even better.

Sandok

Why oh why did I buy my 7900 GT?

Shaga

Excelent review. Seems pretty solid card. Nothing too big nor too slow.

Even overclocked X1950 also? You can pretty much OC every card.

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Vampyromaniac

I think it's because there are two possible scenarios: you could either be buying a new card, or you could be upgrading from an existing one. If buying a new card, I agree with you that this would be a good card to consider, in its price range. But if you were upgrading from a previous generation card in the same price range, then this card is much less compelling due to its gaming performance. I think the latter is what most of those people had in mind, from their comments.

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