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MSI NX8600 GT OC Edition

MSI's value priced and factory overclocked GeForce 8600 GT has been released, and it may be an affordable option compared to the higher priced GeForce 8600 GTS. Does the MSI NX8600 GT OC Edition have what it takes to deliver the goods compared to its bigger brother; can overclocking match 8600 GTS performance?

Introduction

Microstar International (MSI) was founded in 1986 as a computer motherboard manufacturer. Since then, their product lineup has expanded to include barebones PCs, video cards, rackmount servers, networking equipment, and notebooks, among others. Since 2001, MSI has been expanding their manufacturing and distributing base into mainland China. Between their video card and motherboard manufacturing facilities, their annual productivity is estimated at over 27 million parts. They are an equal-opportunity video card manufacturer, producing video cards with both ATI and NVIDIA GPUs, and motherboards for both AMD and Intel CPUs.

For this evaluation, we are focusing on one of their new video cards: the MSI NX8600 GT T2D256E OC, featuring an NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT GPU and 256 MB of GDDR3.

The NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT GPU

On Tuesday, April 17th of 2007, NVIDIA launched the mainstream and value GPUs of the GeForce 8 series: The GeForce 8600 GTS, the GeForce 8600 GT, and the GeForce 8500 GT. Today, we are evaluating the GeForce 8600 GT. The GeForce 8600 GT is, as many readers may remember, almost identical to the GeForce 8600 GTS. They are both made on an 80nm process, and they both have 32 streaming processors and 8 ROPs. Both GPUs are designed to be connected to 256 MB of GDDR3 running on a 128-bit bus. As a matter of fact, the only two differences between them are clock speeds and maximum power draw. Does that sound familiar?

The faster version, the GeForce 8600 GTS, has a core reference speed of 675 MHz, a memory reference speed of 2 GHz DDR (1.0 GHz actual), and a streaming processor reference speed of 1.45 GHz. It is designed to draw about 71 watts of power during operation. The GeForce 8600 GT is significantly slower, but also uses significantly less power. It is designed to consume 43 watts and comes in at 540 MHz on the GPU, 1.4 GHz DDR (700 MHz actual) on the memory, and 1.18 GHz on the streaming processors. Because of the low power usage specification, the GeForce 8600 GT does not require the now typical 6-pin auxiliary power supply connector.

So here we have a situation quite similar to the GeForce 7900 GTX and the GeForce 7900 GT of the previous generation. We have a pair of functionally identical GPUs separated only by the clock speeds at which they run and the power they consume as a result. The key difference here is that the lower power version (the 8600 GT) of this pair does not have an extra path for power to be delivered to the video card.

The MSI NX8600 GT T2D256E OC

The MSI NX8600 GT OC Edition video card is MSI's latest foray into the mainstream video card segment. It features the GeForce 8600 GT GPU running at 580 MHz (40 MHz above NVIDIA's reference design), 256 MB of GDDR3 running at 1.6 GHz (200 MHz above NVIDIA's reference design) on a 128-bit bus. MSI has set the MSRP for this video card at $139.99 USD.

This video card comes in a mid-sized, mostly black box with a black plastic carrying handle. The handle is typical for MSI, but the black box is not typical. MSI has generally used light colored boxes in the past. The individual depicted on the box, however, is standard MSI fare: an armor-clad hero, presumably poised and ready to deliver a death blow to the competition. The front of the box gives all of the specifications necessary for a consumer to make an informed decision. There is also a smallish "OC Edition" sticker firmly applied to the front of the box.

The back side of the box is completely typical for a video card: covered almost completely in small text giving mostly useless information. The two areas of note are only interesting for a bit of humor. First, the little table labeled "MSI Unique Weapon", which purports to show why this video card offers features not found elsewhere. Second is the section labeled "MSI Exclusive Yellow DVI", which seems to indicate that you know the DVI ports are Dual-Link DVI, because they are yellow and that MSI is the only company currently offering yellow DVI ports.

This video card is built with a red PCB. This is typical for MSI-made video cards, but is certainly not typical for video cards with NVIDIA GPUs on board. Most NVIDIA video cards are either green or black. The aluminum cover on top of the heat-sink, featuring the MSI logo and mascot, does not truthfully represent the actual size and shape of the heat-sink. The heat-sink itself is of the milled aluminum variety, is round, and is smaller than the cover which overhangs. It is an unusual design, to be sure, and we believe that the extra size is there almost entirely for branding placement.

The video card's design almost completely eschews electrolytic canister capacitors, in favor of the more stable solid-state capacitors that so many manufacturers have been using lately. There are, however, still a pair of purple capacitors along the top edge of the front of this video card. As is typical for a mainstream NVIDIA video card, there is a single SLI bridge connector on the PCB, and per the design specification of the GeForce 8600 GT GPU, there is no auxiliary power supply connector, whether 6-pin or 4-pin Molex.

MSI chose Samsung memory for this video card, model number K4J52324QE-BC14. According to Samsung's specification, these memory chips are rated to run at 1.4 GHz DDR (or 700 MHz actual). Usually, video card manufacturers will choose memory that is designed to run at least as fast as the shipping product, but MSI did not do so in this case. While faster GDDR3 memory is certainly available, MSI chose not to use it. That means that the memory on this video card is truly overclocked beyond its intended operational speed, by 200 MHz DDR.

On the business end of the MSI NX8600 GT OC Edition, we have the usual pair of Dual-Link DVI ports and the requisite NVIDIA HD video output port. The back of this video card is also typical, with nothing interesting except the large black plastic GPU cooling device retention clip.

As documentation goes, this video card is covered. It comes with a WEEE statement, outlining MSI's compliance with that European waste program. It also comes with 2 quick user's guide. The smaller color guide is printed in several languages and is much more detailed, and more useful to the hardware novice.

The bundle is, to be plain, weak. There is a driver CD, a pair of DVI to VGA adaptors, an S-Video cable, and the standard NVIDIA HD component video output dongle. In the past, MSI has had stronger bundles, but this is small and somewhat less than we are used to.

Price and Comparison

The MSI NX8600 GT OC Edition can be purchased today from Newegg for $129.99 USD. That is $10 below MSRP for this video card.

The question we are asking with this evaluation is simple: Can the GeForce 8600 GT give us a gameplay experience comparable to that provided by the more expensive and higher clocked GeForce 8600 GTS. To answer that question, we are evaluating this video card against a reference clocked NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS video card.

Currently, such a video card can be bought from Newegg for $174.99 USD. That is almost $50 more expensive than the MSI NX8600 GT OC Edition. That kind of money in this market can be a deal breaker, so the GeForce 8600 GTS had better prove itself worthy of a $50 price premium.

We will also overclock the MSI NX8600 GT OC Edition and see how performance compares to the GeForce 8600 GTS. Results can be viewed in each graph on each game plage.