Inno3D Geforce 8600GT 1400MHz 256MB Graphics Card - I-8600GT-G5F3CD
See it at Amazon.co.uk for £58.70Average Customer Rating
(4.5 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
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(5 out of 5)EXCELLENT GAMING CARD!!!
This card is everything the media has made it seem to be. I highly reccomend it for anyone who wants to play all next-gen games like BioShock, World in Conflict etc without spending too much. Games appear crisp and with smooth framerates. Excellent card!!!
(5 out of 5)more than happy
I bought this card to replace the Nvidia 7800GT that my son had in his pc, as I needed it back and didn't want to leave him with only his on board ATI graphics. to cut a long story short i bought him this card (Inno3D Geforce 8600GT) The figures all looked good, but i have to admit i had some doubts, as this card is much less expensive than the one it was to replace, isn't such an impressive looking card, doesn't need its own power plug and doesn't come in a fancy box with free games ect.
All i can say is if you're "thinking" of getting one of these, stop "thinking" you will not be disappointed, Inno3D in my opinion have got it dead right, Plunged it in and tried a few games in World of worcraft with screen resolution and everything up full it still more than doubles the frame rates of the 7800gt and for the price you can go out and buy you're own choice of game and still save money! Or maybe even get a second card! erm... come to think of it anyone want a 7800GT? Cant wait till my son goes out!
(5 out of 5)Great for gaming
When i was buying this card i already had my PC with sfficient RAM (2GB) and a god enough processor. I was purchasing this to replace my old on-board graphics card. I was facing a decision whether or not to get this one, or the same model with 512Mb but a lower MHz. I bought this one anyway, as i decided that there wouldn't be much differance between the two.
This graphics card is amazing for playing games. It doesn't seem to speed up video encoding or photoshop, or any software based things like that. But for gaming it is excelent. I play a lot of high end games now, such as World in Conflict, GTA San Andreas, Flight Sim X and so on. I will admit that World in conflict does not play at full, so i really don't know what you need to play it on max, as i heard that the 8800 cannot either.
However for games about a year old, or less intense games such as GTA, it is amazing. Before with my on-board i was playing it in 800 x 600 at a low spec; now everythings whacked up to full, and there is no ghosting or no "bad" effects at all.
I strongly recommend that you buy this card now, if you are looking to accelerate your performance then buy this card. If you a graphics fanatic in the ltest games then you better get saving up the £400 for dual 8800's.
But from anywhere to average PC user, to high end gamer, this card will suit you perfectly.
(5 out of 5)A bargin if your machine is struggling
I have a two year old computer which really started to show its age with games such as Supreme commander, The Witcher and Timeshift. Big chunks of graphics missing and jerky movements. Very frustrating especially knowing it would be divorce if I mention to my wife that I needed a new computer. So I purchased this graphics card to replace my 6200. I have never replaced anything before in my machine so I was a bit nervous. It was simply a case of swapping them over (make sure you have a PCI express port). When I ran the games the improvement was incredible. They all ran perfectly on high setting. Its like having a new machine. The graphics on the Witcher are stunning. In summary, this card has transformed my computer.
(3 out of 5)Beware the free upgrade
First off, the card I received was 512 MB (a free upgrade said the sticker on the box. Hmm...). The RAM chips are Samsung. What isn't mentioned in the product description is that this memory is DDR2 and is 800MHz. Bear in mind the card is advertised as 1400MHz. The card doesn't look exactly like the one pictured here. The Inno website had two types of which it could be: DDR2 and small fan or DDR3 with a larger fan (there is a `wind' version with a bigger fan, but that is another matter). This card has the smaller fan/heat sink assembly and has one each of VGA, DVI and S-Video outputs. Note that the Amazon picture shows two DVI outputs. This card looks like an 8500GT with an 8600GT core. The box contains the card, driver/manual disk, leads for connecting via the S-Video socket and very basic instructions.
My PC had integrated graphics and Windows Experience Index for both graphics scores were 3.3) Installation of the card was easy and Windows booted fine. Loading the supplied driver (a recent one) from the CD brought everything back to how it used to be except Windows rated graphics at 4.9 and gaming graphics at 5.3. The lowish rating may be due to the slower RAM speed (more on this later).
First job was a session on Supreme Commander, which requires a good graphics card to even run. I should note that my PC has an E2140 1.6GHz and 3GB 667MHz RAM, so CPU may be a bottleneck. At 1280x1024 with medium settings, no shadows and no AA I found it smooth and detailed. Frame rates drop only when in the thick of it with maybe 200 units, or when the red range circles are switched on. Stuff like Dawn of War runs smoothly with everything at max on 1600x1200. Command & Conquer Generals was good at 1600x1200 also, but slower when skirmishing with max enemies, which could be a CPU thing.
Using Nvidia's nTune I found the core would go very high (as these usually do). I progressively turned it up to 630MHz and didn't see any problems. Unfortunately the memory went only to 414MHz, so not much headroom there. (I wanted DDR3!) Using SupCom's performance test I found a slight benefit going to 580-600MHz but nothing to write home about. Of greater concern was the inconsistency in performance over some tests, which I suspect was due to the small fan and heat sink not being up to the job. No problems at stock speeds though.
A pleasant surprise was that the card's fan was no louder than the rest of my PC and I couldn't pick out its sound either. I feared the smaller fan would be a pain but in actuality it doesn't work very hard, which you may consider a good or bad thing. I wasn't satisfied, so I've now got an XFX 8600 GT XXX with Zalman fan and heat sink. Its stock speed is 680MHz and the 256MB DDR3 is set at 1600MHz. The shader clock is also about 25% faster. It is a little bit louder, but the fan moves a lot of air and it outperforms this Inno even on CPU heavy SupCom. It feels better made and Windows graphics scores 5.9 and gaming scores 5.6. The former relies heavily on memory speed so this is where DDR3 is important. The moral is beware the free up(down)grade.
Overall, this Inno card is a fine option for plugging in and forgetting about and the 8600 GT is about as fast as graphics cards get without extra power connectors. However, if you're likely to get a nagging feeling about performance I'd say look elsewhere (unless yours is the DDR3 version). As prices for the outgoing 8 series cards fall you may want to hang on until you find a better performer. My rating however is three stars because of the question marks over the card's spec vs. what is advertised.