DX10 has been a fiasco so far, 8800 owners doesn't feel happy about that but, is that all there is to the Geforce 8 series? If you want a decent GPU for today's games, maybe you should aim a little lower.

Most reviews place the performance of the 8600GT nowhere as high over it's predecesor as we expected. As always, it depends on the games you play or use for testing. MadShrimps assembled several titles and used reallistic settings for cards in this price range (>100).

Pitting an XFX 7600GT (650/800) against a Sparkle 8600GT (540/700), both with 256Mb, gives these minimum frame rates (the ones you should care about):

Fear @ 1280x1024, no AA, 4xAF, HighQ: 25 vs. 34.

Rainbow Six Vegas @ 1280x1024, no AA, HDR, MediumQ: 12 vs. 12.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 @ 1024x768, no AA, MediumQ: 28 vs. 34.

Colin McRae DIRT @ 1024x768, no AA, MediumQ: 19 vs. 24.

The Elder Scrolls : Oblivion @ 1280x1024, no AA, 4xAF, HDR, MediumQ: 34 vs. 41.

As you can see, the old card doesn't win a single time. It's worth noting that it doesn't use more power and, thus, you can mount at least a Zalman VF900 on the Sparkle 8600 GT video card even if it's not yet in their compatibility list. That would do nicely for any noise problem.

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