8600GTS Preview

[coldpower27]

I agree because Hardwarezone ALWAYS has the slowest gaming benchmarks for every card they test. They only got 27fps in FEAR on the overclocked 8600gts 1280x1024 4aa 16af. Thats total bs because I just ran the FEAR benchmark on my 7600gt with same resolution and aa/af and all MAX settings(except soft shadows) and got 30fps. So according to Hardwarezone an overclocked 8600gts cant even beat my 7600gt plus I have a slower cpu.

You can't really compare tests across different Hardware sites, as they test different settings and different time demos, but you can view the performance relative to other cards in that test. So you can see relative to those under the same test reviewer and settings how they perform.

 

[coldpower27]

what sucks is those of us with 24 inch displays at 1920x 1200 es iw as hoping that a 8600 gts would fly but it appears not.

hell even a 320 gts is no good hope a 512mg 8600gts proove a better performer at higher res's or maybe the r600 with its nifty audio chip will proove worthwhile.

seeing as my audigy 2 is worthless in vista it may be a good choice if it plays nice with vista.

The lower end mainstream cards aren't designed with the higher resolution buffers in mind to handle high resolutions. They lack as in the case with G80, the memory bandwidth levels required, and the frame buffer required, if you wish to play at 19x12, the minimum card recommended would be the 8800 GTS 640.

 

[coldpower27]

Well 1950xt is not bad at 1920 and it costs less than 8600gts here.

R580 doesn't react quite as much to a loss in memory frame buffer as G80 seems to, as well this is a performance mainstream card, and not mainstream since the core is based on R580 and not some lower derivative like RV560/RV570.

 

[coldpower27]

Something funny is definitely going on here.



They used their "usual graphics test system" for this little preview, eh? With WinXP Pro, eh?

Then why is the driver revision for the 8600 a 100-series driver? Aren't all 100-series drivers Vista-only? My guess is that the only drivers they could find that supported the 8600 series were Vista drivers, so they benched it under Vista. Massive performance issues right there, especially pre-101-series drivers.

Plus the whole testing methodology is sloppy and suspect. It's pretty clear from the different driver revisions listed and the comments about missing resolutions that they are just cut-and-pasting old numbers from previous benchmarks together, with who knows how many variables?

See the "had up to 2 Gig memory" note. Up to? So numbers are being compared from test runs with different amounts of system RAM? This is ridiculous!

These are some pretty legitimate concerns, we will have to see if there will be a 100 Series driver for Windows XP soon enough when the 8600 GTS launches in about a week or so.

 

[MrMike]

Nope I am indeed talking about F.E.A.R.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2926&p=6

That just reinforces the point I post in every thread that you shouldn't buy the 320 to play at 1920x1200. You can clearly see that same result in the review I posted.

Also, that's also only with 4X AA on. That makes the 320 GTS a perfectly viable solution for someone on a budget for a card that wants to play on their 1080P HDTV.

 

[Stu55]

I'm tired of buying the X600 GT/GTS/etc., I went from a 6600GT to a 7600GT and the performance increase was a nice upgrade, but I think I am going to splurge and probably get a 8800GTS 640 because I will most likely be getting either a 22" or 24" LCD and I want to fully experience truly great performance.

 

[coldpower27]

That just reinforces the point I post in every thread that you shouldn't buy the 320 to play at 1920x1200. You can clearly see that same result in the review I posted.

Also, that's also only with 4X AA on. That makes the 320 GTS a perfectly viable solution for someone on a budget for a card that wants to play on their 1080P HDTV.

Yeah, and who buys a performance mainstream card these days to play with AA off? If you can stand no AA at this level, 1080P is doable, but AA on high end cards is given these days.

I don't suggest you buy the 8800 GTS 320 for 19x12 either, so that's moot. The only issue I was addressing in your post was that I was talking about F.E.A.R taking nose dive with regards to F.E.A.R. and I have proven it does.

 

[coldpower27]

I'm tired of buying the X600 GT/GTS/etc., I went from a 6600GT to a 7600GT and the performance increase was a nice upgrade, but I think I am going to splurge and probably get a 8800GTS 640 because I will most likely be getting either a 22" or 24" LCD and I want to fully experience truly great performance.

8800 GTS 640 is a fine choice for the 24 inch LCD.

 

[MrMike]

Yeah, and who buys a performance mainstream card these days to play with AA off? If you can stand no AA at this level, 1080P is doable, but AA on high end cards is given these days.

I don't suggest you buy the 8800 GTS 320 for 19x12 either, so that's moot. The only issue I was addressing in your post was that I was talking about F.E.A.R taking nose dive with regards to F.E.A.R. and I have proven it does.

You just refuted your own source for the basis of your argument dude. Anandtech's review is only at 19x12. In Guru3D's you can see that there is no drop at 1024x768 or 1280x960, and the drop at 1600x1200 is there, but not huge. They're using 4X AA and 16X AF.

 

[coldpower27]

You just refuted your own source for the basis of your argument dude. Anandtech's review is only at 19x12. In Guru3D's you can see that there is no drop at 1024x768 or 1280x960, and the drop at 1600x1200 is there, but not huge. They're using 4X AA and 16X AF.

Anandtech's review is at more then just 19x12, they tested other resolutions as well such as 16x12 with AA and AF and the difference is 46 to 59 FPS which quite substantial, that is over 20% less performance.

Like I said, 8800 GTS takes a nose dive, with AA in F.E.A.R and the question asked was why does the X1950 XT beat the 8800 GTS 320 which doesn't occur till you get to 16x12 in F.E.A.R. anyway in the Hardwarezone review, which consequently is where the nose dive of the 8800 GTS 320 takes place for F.E.A.R.

As well these results show otherwise that at times the 8800 GTS 320 to 640 is a substantial leap even in F.E.A.R, http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=633&p=0

http://www.techspot.com/review/47-asus-geforce-8800gts/page3.html