MSI 8500GT, 8600GT OC, 8600GTS OC

Of course we have no idea how these cards will perform in DirectX 10 games – we don’t have any yet. Rest assured we’ll return to these cards once Crysis lands in our hot little hands. For now, sit back and wait, as in DirectX 9 games these cards offer only a tiny advantage if you’re hunting for premium image quality.

If you own a 7600 GT or below, don’t care about AA or resolutions above 1280 x 1024, absolutely need to upgrade and are on a budget (whew, that’s a few conditions), then the 8600 series of cards will fit the bill perfectly. We’d recommend staying away from the 8500 at all costs – this is one for your grandparent’s machine.

For the rest of you who are looking to upgrade the 7900 GT, we suggest you stretch a bit further to the 8800 GTS 320MB edition instead, just to be on the safe side – or wait for the 8800 GS that mysteriously just turned up in NVIDIA’s drivers...

	7600 GT	7900 GT	8500 GT	8600 GT	8600 GTS	8800 GTS	8800 GTX
Core (Mhz)	560	450	450	540	675	500	675
Memory (MHz)	700	660	400	700	1000	800	900
Stream processor(MHz)	N/A	N/A	900	1180	1450	1200	1350
Shader units	5 vertex; 12 pixel	8 vertex; 24 pixel	16 stream	32 stream	32 stream	96 stream	128 stream
Memory type	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR2	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3
Memory (MB)	256	256	256	256	256	320/640	768
Memory bus (nits)	128	256	128	128	128	320

SCORES:

8500 GT 6/10

8600 GT OC 7/10

8600 GTS OC 7.5/10