8600 gts so not worth it (XFX GeForce 8600 GTS)

Member Name: mollydog1

Product:	XFX GeForce 8600 GTS
Date:	16/09/09 (13 review reads)
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Advantages: power consumption,double lifetime warranty

Disadvantages: low performance

I have used this card for over a year now,i bought it before ATI released their now famous 3xxx range which i regret i had waited. A 8800 was out of my range as i wanted something good for the price and this jumped out at me,at first i wasnt disappointed,the specs seemed decent enough and the fact xfx had this one factory overclocked seemed the winner throughout the 8600 series.
512mb of onboard memory is good, the thing that limits the card are the use of a 128 bit memory bus width compared to the 8800 gts being 320,289 million transistors compare to the 8800 gts's 681 and the shading processing power of 139 gigaflops to 345 respectively. From this you can see where the card is being limited and the problem with this is that it causes a big effect on performance. I have upgraded my computer now to a athlon 250 processor and 2gb of ram and with the games that are coming out now i can hardly play some at medium detail so now its time for me to upgrade again even though i thought i wouldnt have to for another year or so,this shows how the card has let me down.
For users of the 7800gt + this really isnt worht upgrading to as those cards are still far better than this one. i could only recommend it as an upgrade to low end card users like geforce 6200-6600.
The good thing about the card are that is a has a half the power consumption of the 8800gts so for those who use a htpc this may be an option,ad for the casual gamer who plays titles from a year or two ago this may be for them.also is Xfx's decision to use a double lifetime warranty with this card which means the person you sell the card to stil can have warranty
For the gamers out there this really isnt an option even on a lower budget the ati 3850 is really chea now and twice the card this is

Summary: save your money for an ATI

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