GeForce 8600 GT and GTS review and Shootout

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Overclocking & Tweaking

As most of you with most videocards know, you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. You can do this at two levels, namely tweaking by enabling registry or BIOS hacks, or very simple, tamper with Image Quality. And then there is overclocking, which will give you the best possible results by far.

What do we need?One of the best tool for overclocking NVIDIA and ATI videocards is our own Rivatuner that you can download here. If you own an ATI or NVIDIA graphics card then the manufacturer actually has very nice built in options for you that can be found in the display driver properties.

Where should we go ?
Overclocking: By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard increase its calculation clock cycles per second. It sounds hard but it really can be done in less then a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners not to increase the frequency any higher then 5% of the core and memory clock. Example: If your card runs at 500 MHz (which is pretty common these days) then I suggest you don't increase the frequency any higher than 25 to 50 MHz.

More advanced users push the frequency often way higher. Usually when your 3D graphics start to show artifacts such as white dots ("snow"), you should back down 10-15 MHz and leave it at that. Usually when you are overclocking too hard, it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. Carefully find that limit and then back down at least 20 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well. I really wouldn't know why you need to overclock today tested cards anyway but we'll show it still ;)

All in all... do it at your own risk.

I ran severely out of time with this project and was not even able to make you one more nice graph. But I do have overclock results for you guys. I placed them in this table.

Clock DEF Mem DEF Clock OC Mem OC
8600 GT Galaxy 600 800 730 900
8600 GT XFX XXX 620 800 725 860
8600 GTS Galaxy 700 1000 760 1150
8600 GTS BFG OC 710 1008 750 1100
8600 GTS POV EXO 725 1100 762 1156
8600 GTS XFX XXX 730 1130 750 1110

Now we also did some testing here with Prey at 4xAA and 16xAF.  I placed them in this chart:

For those that have a little difficulty reading the chart, here's the table as well:

Overclocking Prey

1024x768

1280x1024

1600x1200

1920x1200

2560x1600

8600 GT Galaxy

58

39

28

23

13

8600 GT Galaxy 730/900

61

41

30

25

15

8600 GT XFX XXX

59

40

29

24

14

8600 GT XFX XXX 725/860

62

42

30

25

15

8600 GTS BFG OC

66

45

33

27

15

8600 GTS BFG OC 750/1100

72

48

35

29

16

8600 GTS Galaxy

67

46

33

28

15

8600 GTS Galaxy 760/1150

72

48

35

29

16

8600 GTS POV EXO

68

47

34

28

16

8600 GTS POV EXO 762/1156

72

48

35

29

16

8600 GTS XFX XXX

70

48

35

29

16

8600 GTS XFX XXX 756/1110

72

48

35

29

16

Sidenote: Our overclocking results are never a guarantee for your home grown results. Manufacturers' choices in components differ often per batch and so will the end-result. This however is a good indication of what is (or isn't) possible.

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