Leadtek WinFast 8500 & 8600GT with HDMI

Introduction

HDMI video cards have been growing and growing in the market place thanks to the pickup of high definition TVs. While a lot of TVs still carry a VGA port which for the most part does an excellent job, the ability to also have the sound go to the TV with just the one cable is bliss to a lot of people.

With items like Blu-ray ROMs becoming cheaper as well, it makes sense that you may as well use the best digital connectivity when it's available. Not all companies are jumping on the HDMI bandwagon in full force, and while a lot of companies include DVI to HDMI adapters in their package, manufacturers choosing to include native HDMI ports are still few and far between.

Leadtek is the latest company to jump on the bandwagon though, and they haven't tried to go down the sneak "Decoder Card" route like another company did. They have instead released two models, an 8500GT and an 8600GT both sporting a HDMI port straight on the I/O.

What we'll do is have a look at the cards, run some gaming benchmarks to see which card is best for you and talk a bit about the HDMI connectivity.