Alright, so it goes like this. I felt that the 8600 GTS OC2 is a difficult product to place in the market, this is based on its price performance ratio (as it's almost as expensive as the way better 8800 GTS 320 MB) whereas this 8600 GT OC suits my needs much better. Priced at 150 EUR it offers a reasonable amount of performance for your money. Armed with the blue PCB, custom cooler and severely high overclocking potential this can in fact be an interesting purchase.

Generically speaking, the 8600 GT series is a product for those with a 17 or 19" 1024x768; 1280x1024 monitor resolution. It'll offer you decent 3D gaming performance and will allow you to enable AA and AF in most situations as well. I think we can all agree that the current DX10 mid-range line-up from both NVIDIA and ATI lacks the raw power we like to see though, and therefore most of you will wait likely until the Christmas season when new spin-off products are bound to be released.

The custom cooler which falls under the Thermo Intelligent label really is lovely. It's definitely a tad more noisy than the TI cooler we have seen on the OC2 GTS we recently tested, making it noise wise just as audible as a reference cooler. The bonus however is that is does seem to cool much better as we peaked at 60 degrees C and in the end that factor will help you with a better overclock. We got another 143 MHz out of the graphics core, 100% stable, that's just awesome. We OCed the memory from 1400 towards 1670 MHz, that's also pretty nice to observe. Both factors combined will bring the cards very close towards the generic 8600 GTS. Good stuff as it'll boost the overall gaming frame rate slightly better.

We can't end the article without mentioning the life-time warranty. All in all that's a lot of additional value, and definitely something you need to keep in mind when you are out there in the market for purchasing a new graphics card.

Thanks go out to BFG for supplying this review sample, I feel this videocard is an excellent choice when you are in the market for a GeForce 8600 GT.

BFG GeForce 8600 GT TI OC (256MB)
Info: BFGtech
Price: $154.99