Zotac GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition

Overclocking:

Despite the fact the card is passively cooled, we managed to get Zotac's GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition running quite happily up at 587MHz core and 1578MHz on the memory after a bit of tinkering. This was without any additional airflow over the graphics card on our open test bench and is a testament to the heatsink's design.

We played Company of Heroes for a couple of hours on the card at these settings and found that it was perfectly stable, increasing framerates by around eight percent. Supreme Commander also delivered gains of around five percent at 1280x1024, which isn't too bad either.

At higher clock speeds, we encountered system lockups during Supreme Commander - the additional heat generated by the increased clock speed was obviously a little too much for the card to handle. Indeed, the temperatures we recorded in Supreme Commander weren't far off the 100°C mark, while idle was around 74°C at these enhanced frequencies. At stock, we recorded a stock GPU temperature of 70°C and the card loaded at 92°C in our test environment where the ambient temperature was kept at a constant 26°C.

Although these temperatures might seem pretty high, it's not actually that bad for a passively cooled graphics card and certainly well within specification. Nvidia deems the maximum safe temperature on its GPUs to be higher than this as we didn't encounter thermal throttling during our extended gameplay testing.

With that said we do recommend that, if you're considering this graphics card, you make sure your case has adequate cooling and good airflow inside it. This will help to ensure you're not going encounter thermal throttling problems - either at stock, or when the card is overclocked.

Final Thoughts...

Zotac's GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition is a pretty good card with a good feature set and bundle. We especially like the inclusion of the DVI-to-HDMI converter and the S/PDIF adapter, as it puts this card on an almost level playing field with the Radeon HD 2600 XT's media capabilities - something that most GeForce 8600 GTs cannot achieve.

The card's gaming performance is respectable too - certainly better than the Radeon HD 2600 XT if you look at the wider picture. Certainly, Nvidia's GeForce 8600 GT is a better performer than the Radeon HD 2600 XT in BioShock, as we found last month. For those looking for performance comparisons in some of the newer titles that are coming, like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, World in Conflict and the new Valve games released at the start of next month, we'll be visiting these games with an updated test suite in the near future.

However, the problem for Zotac is that if all you're looking for is GeForce 8600 GT class performance, the 8600 GT ZONE Edition is clearly overpriced at £87.24 (inc. VAT), as you can pick up a standard GeForce 8600 GT for as little as £67 including the tax man's cut. GDDR3 versions of the Radeon HD 2600 XT start at around £62, and you're looking at £85 for an HD 2600 XT with GDDR4.

Where the Zotac GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition comes into its own though is on the home theatre features. Not only does it include the DVI-to-HDMI converter and S/PDIF adapter, it also includes HDCP as standard - these are key features for anyone looking to build a home theatre PC with a GeForce 8-series card installed.

Of course, those who have read our XFX GeForce 8600 GT XXX Edition review will remember that Nvidia said we'll soon see all GeForce 8600 GTs sold in the channel will be HDCP compliant, but there is still no firm date on that. We're expecting a lot of the cheaper cards to either disappear or increase in price when HDCP is rolled out across every GeForce 8600 GT. Until that happens, the best thing to do if you want a GeForce 8600 GT that is HDCP compliant is to make sure you double check with the vendor and manufacturer of the card.

Alternatively, you could opt for a Radeon HD 2600-series card and you're not going to come across these problems as all cards support audio over DVI using the DVI-to-HDMI converter that's included as standard. HDCP is also compulsory too, meaning you're not going to have to check, double check and triple check that the card supports the feature required to play back almost all HD DVD and Blu-ray media on the market today.

Ultimately, the buying decision is going to depend on your needs because there is no clear must buy in the midrange at the moment. Previous-generation DirectX 9 cards outperform their replacements, but the new generation of cards have DX10 support and better HD video capabilities.

I guess if you're after a mainstream graphics card with a good set of home theatre features and respectable performance in both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 games, Zotac's card looks to be a better purchase than the Radeon HD 2600 XT, but it's a bit expensive for our tastes at the moment. You could say Zotac's GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition is a jack of all trades, master of none at its current price.

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