The pricegrabber link on the editor's choice card isn't working for me. I could look it up of course, but I presume you're getting some kind of referral money and you'd want to know.

The gigabyte draws more power because it's hotter:

Electrical resistance in semiconductors increases with temperature. Higher resistance means that more current is needed to maintain the operating voltage.

Approximately 10% more power for the 10% more heat it runs at (relative to absolute zero, not zero Celcius) makes sense, but it's probably just coincidence.

I'm not going to do the detailed math but on principle a hotter GPU = higher electrical resistance, for sure.

...occasionally sounds like an old modem caught in a particularly offensive high-pitched handshake. The sound appears to be coming from the board's surface-mounted electrical components, since there's really nothing else that could be making any noise.

Actually it might be the cooling, or to be specific, the heatpipes may start vibrating when everything heats up.

I've had a passively cooled Abit motherboard (K8N SLI). Dead silent when powered up, but after 5-10 minutes of use a high-pitched and *very* annoying whining would set in. At first I suspected the coils, and tried adding a bit of glue ...that didn't help. It only meant that Abit wouldn't swap the board (can't really blame them though).

Applying a bit of pressure onto the heatpipe however killed the noise ...and replacing the board with an Asus fixed it for good.

It never ceases to baffle me how 'hi-tech' companies can mangle the most simple things. Case in point: Gigabyte bundling a PCIe power adapter with its GV-NX86S256H card when the card doesn't even take power in this way.

If they get this stuff wrong, imagine what they're getting wrong with the real technical stuff! Lucky they just cut & paste the stuff they're given by nVidia...

What a shame about the Gigabyte card. Kudos to Gigabyte for going with a passive heatsink, but how could such a noise problem not be caught in testing? What could be causing it; some kind of vibration, perhaps, but from what?

Gigabyte's SilentPipe II is a lot more elegant. ;)

After reading the review, I was quite surprised that TR's two samples had the squealing noise coming out of it. I have a sample directly from Gigabyte as well, but it doesn't make that sound at all. It really was quite quiet. I may have to plug it in again and see if I can make it sing for me. I used it quite a bit in normal settings (as in I actually sat down and played some games) and I am pretty sensitive to such noises.

Bad luck X2? Or is there an issue with the revision they sent?

No lifetime warranty? Given the high failure rate of these expensive video cards I would only get eVGA, BFG, or XFX. These non-guaranteed cards would have to be at least $50 cheaper to make equal.

According to the table on the front page, the 8500GT and 8600GT have 400GHz and 700GHz memory speeds. Impressive if true :P

I might go with an 8500 some day. I just don't game anymore. :cry:

"What's even more bizarre, and perhaps related, is that the GV-NX86S256H comes bundled with a PCIe power adapter—as if there were somewhere to plug it in. Hmm."

lol... I ROFLed at that.

This is a great review, so I hate to needle you guys with a request. I see the 7600gt/gs as the primary competition for the 8x00 series cards, and I am curious as to how they compare. Unfortunately, the 8x00 cards are tested with FEAR at 1280x1024, and the 7600 cards were tested at 1024x768 (http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q2/geforce-7600s/index.x?pg=8) and 1280x960 (http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/geforce-7900gs/index.x?pg=5).

This question is also somewhat motivated by the supposition of the folks at Legion Hardware (http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=637&p=5). They have benchmarks, but I haven't seen independent confirmation.

Small mistake on the last page:
"We'd also shy away from MSI's NX8600GT..."
You actually meant the NX8500GT, didn't you?

Great review thanks. =)

Any change we could see how hot the GV-NX86S256H gets when it has a low-speed 80mm or 120mm fan on it? That is the most likely scenario for using that card--at least in my case (no pun intended).

All I need now is for eVga to make an 8600 that's passively cooled like the 7600GS and I am there, unless AMD gets a Radeon out that's cooled like the 7600GS first.

That Giga-byte solution is just too big.

Not interested in gaming at all but I am waiting for a passively cooled 8500GT with HDMI.

The video decoding (which is a huge deal but not touched on here) and DX10 support make a good desktop card and the HTPC card we've all been waiting for (finally).

>>"Nvidia has disabled the VP2 video processing engine in GeForce 8500 series graphics chips, so it's not even a particularly compelling option for a home theater PCs."<<

Any confirmation on this? The 8600 article posted a couple weeks ago said the 8300GS was going to be the only one of the G86 cards that didn't have it.

I think the 8500GT's VP2 capabilities would have been a big selling point, but without it I think that makes the lower end fairly pointless and leave AMD open to pull a fast one with Radeon 2300 and video decoding...

Meh, could have bought an 8600GTS 256MB for AUS$255, or a GT for AUS$170. Bought a 512MB X1950 Pro for $200. Better $$$ for the performance

Not interested ... I will go ahead with 8800GTS 640MB for sure.

i want to see how the 2600's will perform against these. as far as i'm concerned, 8800 GTX and 2900 XTX benchmarks are worthless, since most people won't be buying them anyway.