The Official GF 8600 & 8500 reviews thread

Wow 8600gt -> 7600gs that is terrible considering in the u.k the 7600gs is half the price of the 8600gt
are things just as bad on the ati side ?

ps: thanks very much for the info inkster..

 

Yeah, pretty much.
Both IHV's dropped the ball this time at the mainstream.

There used to be a time, not so long ago, where the new midrange would out-perform or at least match the top-of-the-line of the previous generation (i.e., 7600 GT faster than a 6800 GT/Ultra, X1950 Pro faster or equal to a X1800 XT, etc), but not anymore.

Comparing a 8600 GTS to a 7900 GT/GTX, the former is a joke, performance-wise, as is comparing a HD2600 XT GDDR4/GDDR3 to a X1950 XT/XTX, for instance.

 

I was pondering the performance differences between 8600GTS and 7800GTX today and ventured over to THG's neat select-o-tron VGA Charts... Well, they are pretty closely matched in everything other than Oblivion, according to THG. Oblivion has magical NV4x/G7x destruction powers.

Must be that magical new G84 HSR power, or the renowned vertex processing allocation, or filtering, or something huh?

BTW, I think the R4x0's are so fast because HDR isn't supported on them and Tom's doesn't bother to mention that.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=854&model2=714&chart=296

 

What is the 8800 GTS 320 doing being faster than the 8800GTS 640? Normal test variation or something?

 

I'd guess anything between 1 and 3 fps of difference among them is well within the margin of error of the test.
Don't read too much into the relative length of the graph bars.