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

Gigabyte 8600GT - The Card

Moving on to the actual card, the whole front is practically taken up by a very cool and kick ass looking heatsink. Gigabyte is really on the ball these days with the Silent-Pipe cards and continues to release good quality and effective products.

While the cooler might not look like much outside of the aluminum that you see on the front of the card there is a strip of copper that runs throughout the whole cooler which helps with the cooling process.

The back of the card shows that the 8600GT does not look as complex as some of the other mid-range cards, we can also see 4 screws that hold the heatsink in place along with a plastic cover that helps prevent the screws from scratching the PCB.

As far as clock speeds go, the Gigabyte GeForce 8600GT comes slightly overclocked compared to reference stock speeds with 570MHz core clock and 1400MHz DDR memory clock. For whatever reason, the sample we got from Gigabyte is running at 600MHz core clock and 1440MHz DDR on the memory - we'll try and find out why and come back to you ASAP. Testing was performed at 600 / 1440.

With no PCI Express power connector required, outside of the SLI connector found on the top of the card there is not a whole lot more to see.

The I/O side of things gives us 2 dual-link DVI connectors and a TV-out port that connects to the breakout box. We can also see the little covers that Gigabyte use on their cards to help prevent damage to the connectors.