What kind of graphics do you need?

match NVIDIA 8600GT against ATi HD 2600XT

Announced in May 15, 2007, Radeon HD 2600XT points finally the end of its nose and thus buckles the arrival of the first ranges DirectX 10 of AMD and Nvidia. How are those cards? AMD manages it to do better than Nvidia with GeForce 8600 The disadvantage for AMD is to arrive a little later on the market, although the difference is only 2 months. in the other hand, AMD profits from the advantages of a more modern manufactoring process, it mean the possibility of going up more easily in frequency, of reducing consumption and of using more transistors for, we hope be able to propose a more powerful GPU.

We have test both graphic cards on 3DMark 05 and 06, in both cases and in the two types of resolutions (1280*1024) and (1024*768) table below present the configurATion uses for this test as for the test of games which follows.

HARDWARE

CPU

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600es(2.4G,4M L2,1066MHz FSB)

Motherboard

Asus P5K Deluxe/Wifi

Graphic

NVIDIA 8600GTS &ATi HD 2600XT

Memory

Vitesta Extrem Edition DDR2 1066 1GB*2

HDD

WD2000JS

LED

View Sonic HDMI 24

DVD-ROM

Pioneer DVR-112DXL

Power

FSP 700W power

Test object

NVIDIA 8600GTS &ATi HD 2600XT

Windows Vista Enterprise

Drivers

ForceWare 168.18

Catalyst 7.6

These two charts are first to integrate Directx10 for an accessible price but on "lost planet" for example, you can already forget the graphic quality returned by a NVIDIA 8800GTS 640M...

match NVIDIA 8600GT against ATi HD 2600XT

Once the activated antialiasing, it is the rout for Radeon HD, especially in average quality mode much more sensitive to the performances of the antialiasing. Whereas the averages of the falls of performances introduced by the antialiasing range between 25 and 30% on all the other graphic cards, it oscillates between 40 and 45% .the variATion feel more especially as the performances with antialiasing historically were the strong point of Radeon. moreover we note that both graphics are more adapted to the 1024x768 than to the 1280x1024.

Game test and results

For this test, we used Windows Vista and 6 plays. All the tests were carried out in 1280x1024, since it is about the basic resolution of the screens of today. Whereas we test the top-of-the-range graphics cards with graphic details high to see ultra high, we tested here in high quality mode and average quality mode. But true disappointment comes from the performances with antialiasing which are relATively bad. To play in 1280x1024 with modern plays, the current medium of range will be shown often too right if one wants to benefit from the last effects. It will thus be necessary often to make compromises and to turn to a chart such as GeForce 8600 GTS.

ATi HD 2600 integrate the UVD, an engine dedicated to the decoding of the movie which completely supports the decompression of the H.264 formats and VC-1 with the flows maxima authorized by the HD-DVD and Bluray. Capacities similar to those introduced by Nvidia with GeForce 8600GT with a difference; Nvidia does not manage that partially decoding VC-1.the CPU uses to read a file in hd slightly higher with the nvidia, well it remains weak.

ATI

NVIDIA