Gigabyte and XFX - GeForce 8600GT graphics cards go head-to-head

Overclocking

Our next step on the list is overclocking. We fired up our favourite utility ATI Tool and got things under way.

With the Gigabyte card using a silent cooler we didn't expect to see much of an increase, the clocks used are 600MHz core and 1440MHz DDR memory. Pleasantly surprised we got 10% on the core taking it to 660MHz and a bump of 120MHz DDR on the memory taking us to 1560MHz DDR.

The XFX on the other hand already utilizes quite a nice speed bump already of 620MHz core and 1600MHz DDR memory clock. Not expecting a huge overclock like the GTS which seemed to be maxed out we were surprised to say the least when we achieved a core speed of 710MHz and a memory speed of 1720MHz DDR.

Let's go ahead and see what type of difference this makes to the overall performance in a sample of tests

3DMark06

While the overclock did not do loads for the Gigabyte offering, XFX received huge gains in 3DMark06.

Prey

Prey gets a small bump on both cards but nothing to write home about.

Company of Heroes

Like 3DMark06 the XFX gives us huge performance gains, however, the Gigabyte does not have as much luck.