Conclusion: Geforce 8600GTS - Great Effects waiting for Games

If you already own a Geforce 7800 GT, GTX or a 7900 GS, upgrading to a Geforce 8600 GTS won't offer you any performance boosts. However, the chip's Geforce 8 architecture does offer certain advantages in games such as Oblivion that make heavy use of shaders. Additionally, an upgrade will get you support for Shader Model 4.0 and DirectX 10, although DX10 is limited to Vista (for now). It is impossible to tell what kind of performance this chip will offer when the next generation of effects are used, as there are no next-gen games available at this time. While Hellgate London, Crysis, and World in Conflict are all scheduled to appear this year, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. As you may recall, the release dates for both Stalker and Far Cry were pushed back several times before the games finally appeared.

If you're planning an upgrade from a Geforce 6, 7300, 7600 or a Radeon X850, you're looking at a very attractive option in the 8600 GTS. Don't expect a better "sweet-spot" card from Nvidia any time soon, though. The Geforce 8600 GT runs at lower clock speeds than the 8600 GTS. The Geforce 8500, 8400 and 8300 will be slower still and feature a slow 64-bit memory bus in some cases. With ATI set to introduce its new line of cards later this month, it will be interesting to see what Nvidia's rival will bring to the market.

The upcoming game Crysis will require DirectX 10 to run at full quality. Only then will it be able to offer the ultra-high level of detail and the motion-blur effect that can be applied to certain objects (the soldier and the flying debris in our sceenshot).