GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 2600 XT - Graphics Card One-on-One

[@SPNG]

There is an error with the title of Devil May Cry 4's framerate chart, it says Tomb Raider which it isn't obviously xD The correct text is "Devil May Cry 4 - 720p, High Preset, DX9 Mode" Not sure how I missed this, the framerate numbers in the chart are correct though, its just the title text that's wrong.

[@trulyirrelevant17]

No idea why KZbin thought this video specifically should be the video that introduces me to you but I ain’t complaining! I like a techtuber that does old tech

[@SPNG]

Welcome to the channel! 👋Thanks for watching, hope you enjoyed this little battle! Much more to come

[@10WA]

In 2008 I was looking to get a 8600gts on Tigerdirect because it was in my budget at $149 I think and I didn't play newest games. I was usually about a year or two behind so it was fine for me. But last minute a open box 8800GTS 320mb came up for $179 so had to grab it. Was worth it, I used it till 2011 and sold my PC for a laptop. Now wished I kept it....

[@HRCOBaconGuy]

a blast from the past! i remember being super excited for the x600 tier of cards in 2007 from how excellent the 7600 GT was. then they go ahead and drop the 8600 GT and GTS, massively cut down from G80 and super disappointing. the fact that you could spend 50$ more and get last mid-high end powerhouses like the X1950 XT/7950 GT added insult to injury. like you mentioned the 8800 GTS 320 absolutely clobbers this card for not much more money. the 4060/ti/7600 releases this year kinda reminds me of these cards in a sad way lol.

[@SPNG]

Definitely, I didn't experience the market at the time but it seems like people were really let down by these cards. I can cut the 2600 XT a bit of slack considering it didn't have as high expectations due to its higher end siblings not being very well received, but the 8600 GTS had big shoes to fill with how successful and adored the 8800 cards were, I can imagine how disappointed NVIDIA faithfuls were when this card was a complete write off compared to the rest of the lineup. And I agree, quite reminiscent of the current "mid-range" cards on the market now, except they come at like double the price xD

[@AliceC993]

@@SPNG With similar problems in regards to lackluster VRAM capacity as well. Time is a circle, I tell ya.

[@brawss]

A funny story (but unfortunate for me). A long time ago I bought a Gigabyte 8600GTS which had no 6-pin power connector. It drew 75W (or maybe even more) purely from the motherboard. After a few months the motherboard died. I think the 75W GPU pushed it to the limit...all other 8600GTS brands had the 6-pin connector 😂

[@SPNG]

Damn, makes me glad I didn't run this card for too long without the 6-pin. I didn't even know you could do that, I found out when I accidentally forgot to plug in the 6-pin one of the days I was testing it 😂

[@mariusflo81]

I used a 2600xt (agp) for a few years and was happy with it.

[@SPNG]

Those were pretty good if you wanted to breathe some life into an AGP system back in the day, DX10 AGP cards were not very common!

[@sgdude1337]

I bought an evga 8600gts in august 2007. Luckily 2 months later the 8800gt came out and I used the step up program to get it. It was a huge upgrade for not a lot of money. 😊

[@mistermudpie]

Don't ask me why, but back then I was rocking two 8600GTs in SLI.

[@SPNG]

Hah nice! Seems to have been an extremely uncommon setup but I do know of some people that did it. Hey though, if the game support was there then it should have been reasonably okay, certainly a lot better than a single card 😅 Makes me want to try 2600 XT CrossFire and 8600 GTS SLI 🤔

[@mistermudpie]

@@SPNG if you’ve got the cards, absolutely! It would make for a fun video that I’d love to see.

[@wertywerrtyson5529]

The 8800GT fell to 199 not long after. Offering a huge improvement over the 8600GT. Personally I ended up with the 8800GTS 512MB for about 250 which at the time was a lot for me for a graphics card. Now I would love to get a good high end card for anything near that price. The 9600GT doubled the shaders to 64. I had mostly used ATI before but the 8800 cards were just too good.

[@SPNG]

Yeah, if someone jumped the gun on one of these cards back in the day can imagine how robbed they would have felt when the 8800 GT/3850 came out, nearly double the performance for the same price just months later. 9600 GT added onto that beatdown even more, really goes to show how bad a value these cards were.

[@drupiROM]

One of the things i don't miss from those times, is the noise made by those coolers and the other fans in your PC back then.

[@SPNG]

Surprisingly both of these cards are pretty quiet, especially the 8600 GTS. They still don't perform up to snuff though

[@drupiROM]

@@SPNG I had a HD4850 and it was loud, i remember i changed the stock cooler to an Accelero S2 and kept it until i had the money for a 8800GTS 320MB the next year.

[@wielku]

Man upgrading from 5200 FX to 2600 XT was massive, that card was great for me at the time You should've covered Driv3r, I has problems running it on 2600 XT, I remember beating Bioshock, Halo 2 Vista, Oblivion and Skyrim (original release) GTA 4 was the big sad, I think I beat it and it was running at like 20 fps or something like that. And to add to that I played everything on CRT mostly 1280x800 with max res being 1280x1024 Sony CPD-E100

[@SPNG]

Oh man that would have been an absolutely massive upgrade 😅

[@TheBig451]

Funny enough, I went from an FX5200 PCI to an 8600GTS! And yeah, I thought it was nuts as a kid! That was my first experience with GPU overclocking, you could actually push the GTS pretty far if I remember.

[@ZERARCHIVE2023]

SLI/CROSSFIRE should come back

[@Stermy57HW]

I remember those days. What a poor period for a low budget build. I was lucky enough to buy a HD2900GT 256mb for 70€ that was probably around 50$. Not my best GPU ever but better than these two. Ps: if I were you, i would not use a GeForce 8600GTS without the PEG connector. You will kill your mainboard. Believe it.

[@SPNG]

Yeah... for a little while it was the dark ages for mid-range parts, kind of funny given (at least NVIDIA's) high end parts were held in much higher regard at the time! When the 8800 GT and HD 3850 came out things got so much better in that segment, but I would be so disappointed with the performance if I had gotten one of these cards back in the day. A 2900 GT would have been a decent cut above these cards for sure. And thanks for the tip, I saw a few other people mentioning that as well 😬

[@thenotwaluigi]

nvidia and amd are really reliving this era of poorly priced budget options

[@SPNG]

Agreed! Couldn't stop thinking about the 4060 cards and RX 7600 when making this review 😆

[@PineyJustice]

200$ in 2007 is worth 300$ today, so at that 300$ price point you can get a 6700xt which is a very solid budget card. Once the 6700xt stock sells through and the 7700xt drops to 400 or slightly below 400$ that'll be an even better deal.

[@andystech101]

Awesome video as always mate 😎

[@SPNG]

Much appreciated Andy 🙏

[@mrmarti2]

I owned an 8600Gt, for me it was a great card, the 8800gt was to pricy in my country.

[@NTGTechnology]

I'd hate to have been the guy who bought a 8600 GTS for $199 or a 2600 XT for $150 at launch only for the 8800 GT and HD 3850 to come out half a year later at $249 and $179 respectively and absolutely obliterate the former while still being single slot cards. Would've felt completely betrayed by both companies.

[@SPNG]

Same here, would've felt completely robbed! Definitely needed to happen though, I can imagine how disappointed people were when this was the performance you'd get for the sub $200 range, especially after all the hype of the first 8800 cards! The 8800 GT and 3850 did it so much better

[@SPNG]

@@lurch789 I mean if you could have found one for very cheap that might have been a decent buy, but the 7800 GTX simply could not measure up to what the 8800 GT and 3850 had in store. With the 7000 series aging as badly as it did in later games a 7800 GTX would have gotten terribly slow for any games of the time, I mean try running Crysis on it with anything above Low settings 😅 Unfortunately they're completely shader bound in a number of games beyond 2007.

[@DuneRunnerEnterprises]

Eas given recently pc with 8600,and some Q2C,ithink. The cound run "Sands of time" rather nicly..😊

[@razorsz195]

I remember back then that a selling point of the 2600XT was you could get GDDR3 512MB Versions, i don't recall a 256MB GDDR4 version so if true i'd hold onto that one for collectability as only Ati used it throughout the successors to the 2000 series on some cards. I purchased 2 HIS iceQ cards, a 256MB X1650 Pro and a 512MB 2600XT, in synthetics it practically doubled and even vs my X1950, the extra vram helped and that did translate to games as i did crank them into the 2600XT's favour because thats how i want to play them, 2 of these in Crossfire would give you 1GB VRAM usable vs the mirroring of SLi's memory to the second card. for the right price and games, it would've been a killer combo if you had a CPU to feed it.

[@cybercat1531]

FireGL V5600 baby :D It's the cheap version to get for 512MB GDDR4 on a RV630 GPU core.

[@razorsz195]

@@cybercat1531 Not at the time, i'd imagine it'd cost more being a WS card..plus i got both cards for 15 and 10 a pop which is pretty good for the UV Reactive aftermarket arctic cooler based designs

[@Protoking]

I had the 2600XT 256MB GDDR4. I paid $99 for it a Sapphire version in Jan 08 with the cool reference design flame cooler. Sadly my dad kept it in a shed in a cabinet that was stolen sigh. All or 99% of the 512mb versions were GDDR3 and the “cheap” version. My friend got a visiontek 2600Pro for a whopping $200 at best buy around the same time. I got my card on Newegg.

[@Sebyz8981]

Great job!

[@SPNG]

Much appreciated 🙏

[@RuruFIN]

8600 GTS had a crappy price to performance ratio. 8600 GT wasn't far behind but it was noticeable cheaper.

[@Milwalkereal]

SPNGGG,how you doing Edit: its a gta 5 reference

[@shinenight]

Bro my igpu on my i7 10875h gets around 38-100 fps on those settings in actual gameplay 60 to 70 fps