Conclusion:

With 25% more clock speed, and 40% extra memory bandwidth for the 8600GTS over the 8600GT, the results we saw in the benchmarks pretty much fell right in the middle of these two numbers, giving a very predictable performance increase for the GTS over the GT. As for the 50% price premium you pay for a 8600GTS over a 8600GT, I’ll leave that up to you to decide if it’s good value or not, personally I don’t think it’s too bad.

That’s enough about the chipset, as for the Gainward Bliss 8600GTS 512MB version, it is a good quality card that stays near the lower end of the price spectrum, and even though I don’t particularly like or agree with some of its design elements, they wouldn’t stop me from owning or recommending one. The only real problem I see is that the cooling is only barely adequate and is far smaller than many other 8600GTS cards on the market, I say if they’re going to make a double slot card (many on the market have done single slot) then they should use that space better and include better cooling.

OzHardware Rating – 7.9/10 

This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)

Average user rating