Total disapointment :( ... Could even beat up a X1950pro. They really need to sell at $150 otherwise you would be better off buying a X1950GT or 7900GS for $150 to $160. At the current $200 to $230 price you could get a X1950XT 256MB which could destroy it but that GPU needs a good powersupply. Only thing going for a 7600GT is the DX10 support and Full H.264 , VLC , Mepg 4 support but that can be found on even other cards.

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You need to take into account that 7900GS will be soon discontinued and X1900 series will face same fate as soon as ATI releases RV630 cards.

Cards based on previous high-end products like 7900 and X1900 based cards are great for consumers, but bad for ATI/NVidia since they have large die sizes and 256bit memory bus (= high board manufacturing costs).

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I wouldn't replace my 7800GT with these but it would be fantastic for a HTPC.

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I think a lot of people is waiting to see some DX10 bechmarks really bad because that's what makes G80 and G84 special.

If the 8600 GTS can't run Crysis at AT LEAST 45 FPS with 1280x1024 with full details and a moderate 4xAA then it's not worth it in my own humble opinion.

Same for the 8800 GTS 320MB, if it can't run Crysis at 60 FPS with 1280x1024 with full details and full 16xCSAA then it sucks...

BTW 8800 GTS 320MB gets near double the performance at 50% higher price and when 4xAA is enabled a little over double. Think about that everyone ;-)

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Are you joking? 8800GTS 320 in Crysis with max details and 16x AA at 60+FPS?

I'm not expecting more than 40fps on my system at 1920x1200 less-than-max-details no aa/af (E6600 3.4GHz, 2GB ram, 8800GTS 640MB at 600/1900)

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My reaction to. Do you play PC games? Very few games can be run at 60fps with full detail even with top of the line hardware. I expect the 8600GTS to get about 20fps in Crysis.

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The only games that I don't see get that amount of fps at 1280x1024 with current mainstream hardware (7900GS) are Black & White 2, Oblivion and of course Rainbow Six Vegas. The rest of the games get 60 or more, excepto for Splinter Cell which gets 52 but that's almost 60 to me. Only 3 games gentlemen and I'm taking this info from Anandtech. If 200$ can get me descent performance at good quality at DX10 then I don't think it's worth it and XFX 7900GS XXX would rock!

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The issues is still one of the direction the industry is going. Games are going to get more graphically intense in the future, and different techniques will scale better on different hardware.

Rainbow Six: Vegas is very important, as it is an Unreal Engine 3 game -- and Epic usually does very well with licensing their engine ... It's possible many games could be based on this same code in the future, though we can't say for certain.

It's not only a question of DX10, but future DX9 games as well -- how will they be implemented, and whether more shader intensive DX9 code lend it self better to the G8x architecture of not.

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It might be a good idea to read more reviews before writing off the 8600 range.

Over at [H], they found the 8600GTS easily beats the X1950Pro and even though the models they tested were factory overclocked, one of them had only a 5% core overclock and no memory overclock and was still well ahead of the X1950Pro. At worst the two cards were roughly even but in many tests the 8600GTS (with just 5% core o/c) was considerably faster. As [H] say in the article link

quote:

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New GeForce 8600 GTS Shines
If you have been waiting for a DX10 video card capable of playing today's games, your wait is over. The GeForce 8600 GTS series GPU destroys ATI's current X1950 series for right around $220.

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So who do you believe? I guess I'll need to read several more reviews to see what's really going on.

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Please remove or edit my above post to remove the (H) bit which caused a problem, I'd do it myself but we have no edit facility.

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