-Little bit of history-

Well according to the analysis done 6 years ago or so, the performance of graphics cards ... years ago revealed that the NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT was actually the best card you could buy in terms of the price and performance of this card, 3DMark which by then was not so mediocre, was ahead even of that old card ATI Radeon HD 3850 that also was one of the best, LOL ok this is Obsolete and I know that makes no sense to do a review of a Video Card so old!, but unfortunately I hadn´t had a chance to upgrade my video card as well which I mainly like to buy the best today as the Nvidia GTX 480, OF COURSE! and spend about £300 at the moment, leave me alone... :P
Good, please keep reading as you´ll understand my point here.

-TESTINGS-

Talking about this old test specifically focused on the 3DMark06 score, a benchmark rate that was performed at YouGamers and served to make a ranking with graphics cards and processors even more interesting for the potential buyer, of course all this back in that time.
The tests made at the time were in standard environment with a resolution of 1280 x 1024, without Antialiasing and no AA filter, and back then, there were compared with the prices that were published in CNET, an online technology website, with great prestigious and currently still so.

The list is updated twice a day, do not know if it still does, and it turned out an interesting way to assess the performance of these solutions according to the price and performance, although it is clear that consider a single test is not total assurance; conclusions are not absolute, you also need to pay attention to all the reviews you can get so you can really know for sure what you're going to buy, has a long life and good performance.

-FACTS-

With everything and that, at that time back, the assessment was very interesting, the NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT card which I got... (and will continue to, don´t know for how long? LOL) ... was the most valuable card in the market, ahead of the ATI Radeon HD 3850 and GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8600 GS and Radeon HD 3870, following on that old list, and that was why I decided to buy it.

Now ... as my PC is not as up to date, I have a P4 3.0GHZ processor at that time was also an ultra powerful processor, and today with these multi-core processor is impossible for this to continue running the games that coming out now ... The last game I could run decently and with the lowest settings was the COD4 and Crysis that are still being for sure amazing games with incredible graphics! But unfortunately today and the new games need new processors with at least 2 CORES and my P4 unfortunately does not work, also because its architecture is old too, but to do essential jobs it does the work ... I mean, surfing, watching movies and listening to music ... for design is fine, I use it with very good performance to run programs like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, but that´s about it.

-My Point of View

The card is now a bit outdated I'm not going to recommend you buy it and if you find it used yet you can afford for 50 pounds or less depending.
I think the card had enough potential and lasted more or less about 5 years of good use, knowing this if you currently want to buy the latest most powerful video card for sure will last a little over 5 years.

Well, no more saying, the point of this review, it was to mention how good it was back then but also made it to give you an Idea when choosing Video Cards... so I recommend that if you want a good video card, pick the Nvidia cards, for its superb performance and durability, and I hope this little outdated review will serve not to buy this card but, when purchasing next GFX cards you´ll find it making these studies I did at that time, also if you need a simple PC with a decent card for ultra cheap cost this Video card Still exists and is available! LOL.

SCORE 4.5/5 (Back in that time)..... now is easily a 3/5 (BTW Im playing Civilization V and STARCRAFT 2 with this CARD!) the card is fine!,,, problem really is my CPU anyway...

Hope you enjoy my review

Greetings and thanks