Date:
Monday , September 10, 2007
Author:
Matthew Krysiak
Editor:
Brent Justice
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EVGA GeForce 8600 GTS 512MB Superclocked

Does size matter? Will we see any advantages to gameplay experience with 512MB of memory on the EVGA 8600 GTS Superclock versus the standard 256MB? Will the extra clock frequency provide any real-world gameplay experiences? We will find out in today’s evaluation.

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System Test Setup

For our test system platform we are using a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor at 2.4 GHz, and 2 GB of XMS2 Dominator CM2X1024-9136C5D at 5-5-5-15 1T. We are using the latest chipset drivers available and the latest BIOS at time of evaluation.

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Video Card Comparison Setup

All three video cards were evaluated at their default frequencies and with the latest drivers available at the time of the evaluation.

Evaluation Setup

Please be aware we test our video cards a bit differently from what is the norm. We concentrate on examining the real-world gameplay that each video card provides. The Highest Playable section shows the best Image Quality delivered at a playable frame rate. We use a high performance system, with a very fast CPU in order to remove CPU bottlenecking.

In our graphs we use some abbreviations to indicate the method of AA or AF being used.

P ADAA = Performance Adaptive AA – This indicates the use of Performance mode Adaptive AA on X2000 series ATI cards.

Q ADAA = Quality Adaptive AA – This indicates the use of Quality mode Adaptive AA on X2000 series ATI cards.

TR MSAA = Transparency Multisampling Antialiasing – Indicates the use of NVIDIA’s Transparency Multisampling quality setting on GeForce 8 series video cards.

TR SSAA = Transparency Supersampling Antialiasing – Indicates the use of NVIDIA’s Transparency Supersampling quality setting on GeForce 8 series video cards.