XFX 8600GT and 8600 GTS XXX Edition Video Cards

The XFX 8600 GTS XXX Edition

If the XFX GeForce 8600 GT series doesn’t get you excited, don’t worry as there is yet another graphics card series that is build off the same NVIDIA G84 core. The GeForce 8600 GTS is identical to the 8600 GT except for the fact that HDCP support is now required and the core and clock frequencies are higher than even the overclocked XXX Edition of the 8600GT.

The standard specification for the GeForce 8600 GTS calls for the core clock to run at 675MHz, the memory at 2.0GHz and the shader clock on the stream processors to be 1.45GHz. The XFX GeForce 8600 GTS (part number PV-T84G-UDF) operates at the suggested settings. For those that like overclocked pieces of hardware, XFX has the XFX GeForce 8600 GTS XXX Edition (part number PV-T84GUDD)! The XXX Edition has a core clock of 730MHz, memory speed of 2.26GHz and a stream processor frequency of 1566MHz. These higher clock rates help improve performance as the clock frequency and bandwidth is increased.

Right off the bat you’ll notice the XFX 8600 GTS XXX Edition doesn’t use a black PCB as it’s green again. The card itself doesn’t look bad being green as the heat sink is much larger than the one on the GeForce 8600 GT and the card has a nice black top plate that has the XFX logo on it. The GTS version of the 8600 is again a single slot card, which is nice.

The XFX GeForce 8600 GTS is also the first graphics card to support HDCP over dual-link, allowing video enthusiasts to enjoy true high definition movies on extreme hige resolution panels such as the 30″ Dell 3007WFP at 2560 x 1600. Other than two native dual-link, HDCP enabled DVI-I outputs the GTS supports all of the features that the GT does like; a 7-pin analog video out port that supports S-Video directly, composite and component (YPrPb) outputs via an optional dongle.

The GeForce 8600 GTS has a maximum power draw of 71 watts, which is enough for NVIDIA to add a 6-pin PCI-Express power header to the board to be on the safe side of power consumption. A standard x16 PCI-E slot draws 75 watts of power, but when the cards are overclocked it will draw more than this. Since we are using the overclocked XXX Edition graphics card, having this 6-pin PCIe power header gives us piece of mind.

The fan on the 8600 GT was of a 2-pin design, while the fan on the 8600 GTS is a 4-pin design. This allows the fan speed to be monitored and controlled by software applications.

The heat spreader is held down by four screws and this time around the memory makes contact with the spreader to help dissipate the heat generated from the 2.26GHz memory IC’s. The thermal interface material on the GPU was properly applied as were the thermal pads that bridged the gap between the memory and heat sink.

With the heat spreader completely removed it’s obvious how large of an area it covers.

Once the thermal interface material was removed from the GPU core an updated NVIDIA logo was easily seen along with an A2 revision of the G84 core. This A2 G84 core was made in the seventh week of 2007, so it’s only a couple months old!

The XFX GeForce 8600 GTS XXX Edition uses Samsumg memory IC’s, which are obviously different than the Qimonda branded IC’s that were on the slower clocked 8600 GT XXX Edition. The Samsung K4J52324QE-BJ1A IC’s operate with 1.9V 0.1V and a clock frequency of 1GHz (2GHz GDDR3). These memory chips are then overclocked from their rated 2GHz up to 2.26GHz for improved performance.