I recently covered the 8600 GTS and went into greater detail about G84, the chip behind NVIDIA's new mid-range DX10 parts, so if you wish to learn more about the five new cards NVIDIA introduced this week or check the comprehensive review on the 8600 GTS, follow this link.

To summarize, I found that while the 8600 GTS has indeed brought new levels of performance to the mid-range sector, it's only just managed this by the skin of it's teeth. Though i can't complain about the better than 7900 GT performance the 8600 GTS offers, I was expecting more, i think everyone was.

Still, I see the 8600 GTS in positive light, there's nothing inherently poor about the GTS and no real weak point, so while it's a little disappointing the performance isn't leaps and bounds ahead of what was already available, it's still a highly competitive mid range card, even if it does need a bit of a price cut to win back end users.

MId range DX10 Card: 8600 GT 8600 GTS Chip: G84 G84 Transistors: 289m 289m DX support DX10 + SM4.0 DX10 + SM4.0 Process: 80nm 80nm Stream Processors: 32 FP32 scalar ALU's 32 FP32 scalar ALU's ROPS: 8 8 Core Clock: 540 MHz 675 MHz Shader Clock: 1.19 GHz 1.45GHz Memory Clock: 700 MHz 1000 MHz Memory interface: 128 bit 128 bit Memory Bandwidth: 22.4 GB/s 32 GB/s Memory Size: 256 MB 320 / 640 MB

While architecturally the 8600 GT is the same as the 8600 GTS (32 stream processors, 8 ROP's, etc), it's clock speeds have had a considerable snip. We find the core at 540 MHz, shaders at 1.19 GHz, and the memory clock is at 1600 MHz. On the bright side, the GT is 30~40£ cheaper than a GTS, weighing it at around the £90~100 mark. At this price point, and providing the lower clocks don't cripple it, there's real potential for the GT to shine a little brighter than it's big brother in terms of price/performance.