Albatron GeForce 8600 GTS Video Card Review

Introduction

Just a couple of weeks ago NVIDIA launched their 8600 series of cards with the 8600 GTS and 8600 GT. Aimed at the bread and butter price segment of the market, $150-$230, they produced a solid card that has great HD DVD / Blue-Ray Disc playback and will able to play upcoming DirectX 10 games. Today we are looking at the higher end model 8600 GTS from Albatron. Though they aren’t one of most well known add-in card partners here in the states they do sell and support some great hardware. Let’s take a look at what we got from them.

Albatron shipped us out a retail sample of their GeForce 8600 GTS. The card itself adheres to the NVIDIA reference design and is clocked at the speeds recommended by NVIDIA. This is a good move on their part as it ensures that you will get a quality part that is working at the designed and tested specifications. It means that barring a random part failure you will likely not have any problems with the card failing as some overclocked models may, if not designed correctly.

Looking at the front of our card we see a carbon look sticker with the Albatross logo, that Albatron is well known for, clearly displayed. Personally, I think the heat sink looks nice, not overdone or flashy. The rest of the card is set up just as NVIDIA intended it to be, with a single power connector on the right side, and an SLI adapter on the top. The core speed of the GPU underneath the heat sink is running at 675MHz while the 256MB of DDRIII memory is clocked at 1.0GHz.

On to the back side of the card we see various stickers displaying the part number and type, as well as a RoHS sticker, meaning the part is made from lead free materials. The card is equipped with two Dual-Link DVI connectors, both of which support up to 2560×1600 resolutions. It also includes a 9-pin S-Video style adapter that you can use for TV out functions.