Geeks.com sent us over one of the best video cards on the market today: the GeForce 86000GTS with 256 MB VRAM and a crazy fast 675 MHz engine clock. The card is on the high side of the middle-end graphics cards compared to others available and it’s currently selling below $200. In this article we will test the multimedia performance of the card as used in video playback and rendering support rather than its already well-benchmarked multiple times so far and well-known gaming abilities.The Zotac 86000GTS GPU also sports 400 MHz RAMDAC technology and a maximum resolution of 2560×1600. It comes wiht 256 MB GDDR3 memory with 2 GHz memory clock and 128-bit memory bus width, all on a PCI Express x16 interface. It is SLI and HDCP ready (some 8600GTS cards don’t come with HDCP support but this Zotac-branded card does), and it comes with Dual Link/Dual DVI connectors. In the box we found the card itself, a driver CD, a DVI to HDMI adapter, a DVI to VGA adapter, an S-Video to HDTV-out adapter and a 2x 4-pin Molex power for PCI-e enabled motherboards.
The general features of the card inclue Microsoft Direct X 9 and 10 support, including DirectX 10’s Shader Model 4.0, the Lumenex Engine & Quantum Effects, OpenGL 2.0 support, true 128-bit HDR lighting, 16x Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA), PureVideo HD with support for H.264 decoding.
PureVideo HD is a second version of PureVideo as found in the GeForce 7xxx cards. This time Nvidia made a lot of work on how their architecture handles VC1 and h.264 decoding and so they offload almost up to 100% of the main CPU when a supported application playbacks such video files. To get that 100% CPU offload, there are some prerequisites: You must run Windows Vista and DirectX 10 and the video playback application must support the PureVideo HD architecture, although with DX10 Nvidia is able to help other, non-supported applications, to get some gaining in CPU offloading, just not as much as if your app was specifically supporting the new API. Most Windows XP DX9 and unsupported DX10 apps can get some gain of performance regardless though, so that’s a good thing: especially if you run on a not-so-fast PC, the level of performance you get out of it can be significant and the difference between “frustrating HD playback and being watchable”. A PureVideo HD driver for XP is expected this summer, so until then the previous implementation is supported. Here are our impressions with various applications & OSes so far, compared to our previous graphics card (an ATi X300 SE, but DELL also called it X100 back then when we purchased the system from them):
h.264 24fps 1920×1080 .mov video with Quicktime Pro (this application can provides us with fps performance peeks during playback)
XP PRO with ATi Radeon X300: 10-13 fps
XP PRO with GeForce 8600GTS: 19-24 fps
Vista with ATi Radeon X300: 14-15 fps
Vista with GeForce 8600GTS: 24 fps
h.264 24fps 1920×1080 .mp4 video with VLC
XP PRO with ATi Radeon X300: choppy
XP PRO with GeForce 8600GTS: somewhat choppy
Vista with ATi Radeon X300: choppy
Vista with GeForce 8600GTS: smooth
1080p 24fps WMV video with Windows Media Player 11
XP PRO with ATi Radeon X300: somewhat choppy
XP PRO with GeForce 8600GTS: smooth
Vista with ATi Radeon X300: smooth
Vista with GeForce 8600GTS: smooth
Not having a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD optical drive around to test won’t give enough justice to this card, but regardless of it, it has already made our multimedia HD life much more bearable than before.
Where the big surprise came in though was with our consumer $130 video editing solution: Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8. For those who know Vegas, it does not specifically support any professional GL card like the Quadros. Video editing is my new main hobby, and so I needed something that could speed up Vegas even if it didn’t specifically support GL or PureVideo HD. Thankfully, the GeForce 8600GTS came in to outperform my old ATi card and that was a surprise to me because I didn’t really expect it. Vegas now playbacks HDV video from the timeline or the media-bin at double the performance than before — without even have to request a “build dynamic ram preview” from Vegas. All I can say is that HDV editing with Vegas is now bearable on our DELL 3 Ghz P4 with 3 GB RAM. And the fact that the card supports HDTV & S-Video out is a very important point for video editing as it allows you to test the colors, contrast and brightness of your video to a real TV — just like the pros do (the Pro version of Vegas supports playback preview on an external TV monitor).
It gets better: we downloaded the “Magic Bullet Editors 2.0” effects filters for Vegas as this specific application can take advantage of Nvidia’s GPUs. Here is the amazing result of before and after:
– Magic Bullet on HDV video with ATi X300 card renders 1 frame per ~4 seconds.
– Magic Bullet on HDV video with GeForce 8600GTS card renders ~12 frames per second.
Regarding 2D performance, the card managed exceptionally well. Both our monitors worked perfectly in terms of quality (our Viewsonic 1680×1050 and our rotated Samsung at 1200×1600) but as much as we loved the fast hardware and had fun playing with the Froggy 3D demo, the card’s drivers were not all rosy though. The stable drivers had a bug with our dual monitor setup where one of the monitors is rotated 90 degrees: it would rotate the screen but not… the mouse cursor. The bug is fixed in the unstable driver from July 5th, but we managed to found another dual-monitor bug: the Quicktime browser plugin would crash our Firefox and IE unless we disabled Quicktime’s “Enable DirectDraw on secondary monitor”. Hopefully, this bug will be fixed soon from either Apple or Nvidia. My suspicion is that the bug is on QuickTime though not liking dual monitors much, especially when one of them is rotated — although the crash did not happen with the ATi drivers.
Gaming aside, where the card is one of the best around, this card is the poor man’s professional GL and video card. It speeds up up to 80% not only video playback, but even video editing systems that support DirectX instead of GL. Given that Vegas starts to become very popular among amateur and semi-professional videographers lately, this card can help speed up some operations on that application or other consumer NLEs that support DirectX instead of GL. We can’t recommend enough the GeForce 8600GTS as a multimedia powerhouse, but if you can’t afford the particular model, consider the GeForce 8400GS at just $63 which also has S-Video out — a pretty important feature for all you prosumer Vegas videographers!
IIRC I can decode h264 content since my 9600XT and use shader stuff to process video. (ATI had a demo about that too)
OTOH, What is Ati X100? X1K? X1300/1600/1650 or what card…
A quick glance to article shows some bias traces in the writing and I personally want some more details on ATI card and want a comparison with X2400 or above card to play in even fields.
As a conclusion: ATI Cards can decode and process this thing since 9500 and up.
I believe that the card is a rebranded version (possibly manufactured specifically for DELL, as that’s the model name that my receipt says) of the ATi X300 with 128 MB RAM, PCI-e, one DVI and one VGA ports. Dell calls it X100, but feel free to call it X300. The PC was purchased in March 2005, if that helps you further to locate which card it is exactly.
> shows some bias traces
There is no bias. It is SIMPLY my EXPERIENCE from my old ATi card to this new GeForce card. I have used no other card in the last 2 years in that PC.
>and want a comparison with X2400
You are in no position to demand anything. This site is not Tom’s Hardware where they have 10,000 graphics cards laying around them and they can pick and choose for their articles. These cards were tested in my personal machine and I simply wrote about my impressions after doing that upgrade last Saturday. I found the multimedia performance to be an important upgrading, so I wrote about it.
I am pretty sure that ATi has other recent technologies that do similar things, but I am in no position to test them. Feel free to send me one of these newer cards, and I will make sure that I will update my article accordingly! Until then, what I have in my lab will have to do.
So, take it easy when you have your expectancy of a graphics card review UP THERE. This is not your casual 3D gaming review, but from the point of view of someone who upgraded to a new card and saw a significant multimedia performance increase in the *2D and video space*. There is nothing more, and nothing less into it.
Edited 2007-07-19 08:22
While I do not object to the points you raise (in poisition to demand, the rebrand and other all) I just wanted some clairification and tried to point that cards are just “uneven”…
Since the review is short, and the uneven comparison makes the review “smell” biased.
Yes, my language may sound a bit inflammatory (I’m not intended to do it) and I’m really sorry for that but unfortunately I’m not a gamer and I don’t read “casual 3D gaming reviews” but slashdot, OSNews and such. I’m just a linux programmer who works with low-level stuff and love watching movies.
I just expected a clearer article, my bad.
I’m just a linux programmer
I’m confused how you can be a linux programmer and such an apparent fan of ATI.
(I) want a comparison with X2400 or above card to play in even fields. [/quote]
That card has [i]no Linux drivers period. X1900 and friends have drivers, but not open source like your 9600xt.
nVidia’s drivers are closed source as well, but at least their performance is almost on par with their Windows drivers (unlike ATI’s) and at least they actually have drivers for their newest cards.
The Linux drivers don’t do a lot of H.264 decoding, so it’s all pretty irrelevant to this article. I just find it weird when people have loyalty to a hardware company, and especially so when it’s a Linux guy with loyalty to ATI. And before anyone wonders, I don’t have “loyalty” to nVidia. The moment ATI puts out a faster card with lower energy usage and good Linux drivers I’ll be buying ATI.
ok, I found some more info about the specific card sold with the specific DELL workstation. The card was rebranded but under the hood was just the “ATi X300 SE PCI Express 128 MB”.
Edited 2007-07-19 08:18
Out with guns blazing!
You’re serious? She said that it was her old card. It was just a smallish review on how nice the speed bump is with the new more RECENT video card. And there you had to crucify her for something she never intentionaly meant to do.
Thanks Ronald, appreciated!
Just out of curiosity – given the Nvidia 8600 a go with *NIX? it would be interesting to see what/how it performs – especially with Solaris.
Regarding “Pure Video” I assume that is a Windows only feature – they haven’t/won’t make it available using OpenGL on supported *NIX platforms 🙁
When you use a rebranded ford to race with a ferrari,
race looks biased to ferrari. It’s that simple.
Actually, it’s not unfair at all. You see, the article simply shows what happens when you upgrade an older PC. You see, it is NOT clear that if you upgrade a graphics card you will get so much better rendering times and video playback. Sure, you will get better 3D performance, but multimedia is NOT clear to everyone out there that it will be faster. And this is why I wrote the review: because I wanted to show to fellow videographers or even casual HD enthusiasts who don’t use NLEs or apps that support GL, that they can clearly benefit from a newer card. I am pretty sure that a newer ATI card will perform equally well in the multimedia front: it’s just that I have no way of testing it.
Hence, I find my article pretty clear as to what it was trying to achieve: a WAKE UP CALL to fellow media users. I know video semi-professionals who use an Intel card with their Adobe Premiere!!! I really hope that this article wakes them up because there is significant speeds up to be gained from a gaming card, even if your media app doesn’t support Quadro GL or whatever other similar PRO card!
I am not sure how more clear this can be written as.
Edited 2007-07-19 10:47
Umm, yes I thought that too after writing the first comment, you are right. IMHO if you’ve written that more explicitly in your review, I could realise that earlier and just say. “Oh, yes! good point” and write nothing an move on”.
You are far more experienced than me in writing articles (I’m writing a blog about my personal experiences about programming and computers in a blog) but I’ll say that anyway. Sometimes implicitly written intentions cannot be understood and some unnecessary noise can be raised by readers (like me. I just missed the point of the article).
Going by your analogy, you’re displaying a bias towards Ford. It’s no different from the people who accuse ArsTechnica of having an “anti-Mac” bias – when, if anything, they simply have an “anti-bullshit” bias. A decided lack of context is demonstrated by the failure to realize that the same standards are applied to all their reviews – not simply those of Apple products.
Here’s a rather telling question: would you have had the same objections if the comparison had *not* been made to an ATI card, but rather to an nVidia card of the same vintage?
Note the resolution. Is the stuff you’re playing back on your 9600XT 1920×1080?
I can play 1280×720 smoothly with an FX5200, but 1920×1080 is 2.25x that resolution…
First, typo: 86000GTS on the third link.
Secondly, presenting the 8600GTS as “one of the best video cards on the market today” is just odd. It’s a budget card, and not a highly recommended one. It’s for example not mentioned on Tom’s Hardware “Best Gaming Cards for the Money: June 2007” Guide ( http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/06/11/the_best_gaming_video_cards_… ).
I normally enjoy OSNews well filtered set of news, but a hardware review site it isn’t.
I disagree. I spent a week reading gaming reviews online, and I haven’t heard a bad word about it. It is not a slow budget card. According to gaming reviews elsewhere, it is middle-to-high-end.
For my own needs, as a videographer, it does the job perfectly. And that’s why I wrote about it.
You should have read Anandtech, then. They don’t exactly come out and say it’s horrible, but they do say it was disappointing and they expected more. At least on the gaming side – the multimedia performance is quite good. Calling it one of the best is a little misleading IMHO, unless you specifically state that you’re talking about multimedia capabilities and not gaming. Anyway, you’re clearly enjoying it and that’s what really matters I suppose.
The bottom line is that the 8600 really doesn’t offer what we would expect from a next generation midrange part. While on its own the 8600 series is not bad hardware, NVIDIA needs to rely on more than its feature set to sell its product. This is especially true when DX10 games are not abundant and fairly few people are even running an operating system which supports DX10.
The GeForce 6600 GT outperformed the Radeon 9800 Pro in virtually every benchmark, sometimes by large margins. It managed this with prices that were at the time quite a bit lower than the previous generation’s champ. GeForce 7600 GT was also typically faster than GeForce 6800 GT/GS, and it once again came with a lower price tag. The 8600 hardware on the other hand doesn’t appear significantly faster or cheaper than the cards it’s replacing..
Even if we can’t expect new hardware at a particular price point to blow away the competition, we would at least like to see a consistently better performance than similarly priced previous generation hardware. Our follow up benchmarks confirm that we simply don’t get this from the 8600 series. For users who want the highest performance for their money, the 8600 series is not the answer. If you can live without full H.264 decoding support and you still want DirectX 10, the 8800 GTS 320 is currently so much faster than the 8600 GTS that we would recommend spending the extra ~$75.
Edited 2007-07-19 15:18
“You should have read Anandtech then”
What gives you the right to make such demands? She merely wanted to write an article about HER experience with the card! That’s all! She wasn’t doing a card roundup, wasn’t comparing it to anything besides her previous card….
Why so many of you are having issues with this article baffles me!
Eugenia checked out several other sources and nobody had any issues…while you might consider Anandtech a great source, maybe she does not…Or maybe checking EVERY site isn’t possible?
Eugenia, thank you for taking the time to write this article. I’m also getting very into video editing, and I’ve been looking for a card much like this one…Especially at under $200! I found your review to be extremely personal and approachable…Keep ’em coming!
I think you took my comment the wrong way. I didn’t think the article was bad at all – maybe not very useful, but I don’t have any problems with it. I was simply saying that calling that card “one of the best” isn’t really the general consensus out on the web, and pointed to one of the most highly respected hardware reviewers as an example. I’m actually not sure which sites Eugenia did go to that would have called it that, because AFAIK there isn’t much disagreement about it.
I think a lot of the people complaining about the article were simply expecting this to be a hardware review, which it is not. It’s more of a discussion about one person’s experience with it than an exhaustive review, which the title should have given away.
Edited 2007-07-20 04:50
I have to agree with you. I was puzzled at the comment of it being one of the best. I don’t see any compelling reason to put it into that category.
Wording… if it would say one of the best in price/performance for this particular purpose, or just best for this purpose, or not even using “best” since it’s really not compared to anything but saying good/nice/well performing for this purpose for such a price, well, then I don’t think anyone would’ve commented anything. But.
[quote]presenting the 8600GTS as “one of the best video cards on the market today” is just odd. It’s a budget card, and not a highly recommended one. It’s for example not mentioned on Tom’s Hardware “Best Gaming Cards for the Money[/quote]
Eugenia was reviewing its multimedia playback capabilities. The 8800(gts/gtx/ultra) doesn’t have H.264 decoding support, making the 8600gts just about nVidia’s best card with that playback capability she was reviewing (you’ll note her comment “gaming aside, etc”).
Tom’s doesn’t have any 8600 GTS in their VGA charts. There’s nothing to back up their claim as to what is good for the money. They spent time coming up with a list, but not showing how or why the list is worth anything.
Digit-life’s digests are for more useful, and with less text to boot. But, they don’t spoon-feed a list of, “if your wallet is this thick, buy this card.” Unfortunately for Tom’s guys, non-gaming features and other concerns (like noise–I can get nothing faster than a 8600GTS that’s silent) often matter, in which case game FPS is still important, but not everything.
But, yeah, this is why OSNews shouldn’t try to be a PC hardware upgrade site
.
It’s of course not a bad card and better than some CO2 monster. But imo it doesn’t fit on OSNews – just my opinion.
OSNews is a generic tech site and always has been, and so it fits fine. We always had, have, and will continue to have hardware items explored here. In fact, the device was tested from a software point of view in terms of video/NLE/rendering performance rather than taking apart its hardware side and 3D gaming (which I personally have little interest at, plus it’s an aspect that was addresed by other gaming articles in the past hundreds of times).
That’s all fine and dandy, sure.
But seriously, I’m more interested in finding out how specific hardware works with OTHER OS’s, not just windows. If you really want to provide value to the readership of -this- site, I think you’ll find that’s the way to approach a hardware review.
This article felt like a paid advertisement from Nvidia that gives a thumbs up endorsement of their Windows drivers. Does it work with BeOS? Haiku? SkyOS? Syllable? How are the Linux Drivers? Can I put it in a pegasos?
These are the questions _I_ would expect to see answered in a Hardware review on OSNews. Maybe I’m a little bit out there, but it seems like that would make a lot more sense than, “I’m so l33t. I got a new gFx card and it’s uber sleek in Windoze. Pr0n plays so much smoother!”
My 8800 GTX with 512megs of ram pops on your 8600gts
It lacks in so many ways. Is this a blog? “hey, today I bought this hot new stuff!!”…
Hi Eugenia — how was the sound/noise level of the card? I’d like to look at getting one, but my wife is pretty much death on loud fan noise.
Thanks!
The fan can be heard a bit only when the PC turns on. After the USB and other drivers of Windows have loaded, the fan turns off, and you never hear of it again. At least not with video playback/rendering! Not sure about heavy gaming.
Thanks for the info, Eugenia — I appreciate it! Good article, too
So, seeing as this is a hardware review on osnews I skimmed it, looking for where it described compatibility (or lack thereof) with alternative OS’s.
Gee, it doesn’t.
So how exactly is this valuable to the audience of this site? And how is this even close to News?
Please, for hardware reviews like this, on this site — it would be nice to know what Alt OS’s support the hardware. Otherwise, if I wanted to know how great (or not) a specific product is, I’d go to Tom’s Hardware.
I’d rather know how well it works with things that -aren’t- Windows.
We got the card for usage with Windows. OSNews is not an “alternative OS site”. It is a tech site with a given “alt OS” side. Sometimes we test things with other OSes, sometimes we don’t. Besides, the point of the article is PureVideo HD, and so this is only available in Windows.
This is not called LinuxNews or NixNews, or AntiMSNews…. I come to this site because I’m a Windows AND Alt OS Enthusiast and i come here get a collection of news articles for all OSs. If you don’t like Windows, cool it’s your opinion, but if the FOUNDER of the site wishes to SHARE her new findings then so be it.
So even if a few people find this article useful then awesome. If you find it useless, then DON’T READ IT and move on. No harm, no foul
Did I say not to test with windows?
Did I say I had no interest in windows?
Do you care that I posted my comments from within windows?
Do you think I’m a total idiot? Wait, please don’t answer that.
It’s all fine and good that you got the hardware, that you tested it under windows, and that it worked great for you. Awesome. I’m thrilled for you, really I am.
I’m just trying to point out, that I think a _great_ way to add value to your reviews would be to subject the hardware to some unorthodox testing with _OTHER_ operating systems! In fact, that would probably be the most valuable parts of the reviews!
If I read a review on a product, generally the outcomes
boil down to a nice matrix with options of:
Worked Great, Worked OK, Sucked
crossed with
Price too High, Price Just right, OMG This is a steal
I’m just saying that I think it’d be really, really nice to put more of an OS slant on it, and add a lot of value for the readership if you added into matrix another dimension describing OS compatibility.
I don’t know how much more clear this can be: Only Windows can be benefited by PureVideo HD, because there are no such drivers for any other OS. And so, it would be a WASTE of my time to report on that 3% of better speed on Linux (in any).
Besides, I have no plans installing Linux or Solaris or FreeBSD on that specific PC, because this is my main workstation PC and I don’t mess up with it. Proof that the first upgrade only happened 2.5 years after I bought it. I have other PCs to mess up with and do tests and reviews and install alternative OSes, but none of these other PCs have PCI-express slots.
So you’re saying, it’s not worth buying?
If you are under an alternative OS only, it will make little difference if you are only interested in multimedia and NOT on gaming, yes. But if you are under Windows and you use an older card for your day to day operations and multimedia, you better damn upgrading right now! Even the 8400GS which costs only $63 will be better than an Intel or old nvidia/ati cards.
I’m just saying that I think it’d be really, really nice to put more of an OS slant on it, and add a lot of value for the readership if you added into matrix another dimension describing OS compatibility.
Bryanv, enough already. You made your wish, we explained why it is impossible for us to adhere to your wish, yet you continue to wish for something we already explained to you a hundred times we cannot bring.
Like I said, I’d be more than willing to test this card using alternative operating systems. Will you provide me with the card, and will you pay for the time I would spend on doing that test? We are not a big hardware website with full-time employees, bryanv. We are a voluntary effort, we do this in our free time, without getting paid. The time we spend on OSNews, is time we cannot spend managing our real lives.
And that time ain’t cheap.
Saw this…makes me sad.
Hopefully it will be addressed soon.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=781&num=1
Previous NVidia cards were within frames of each other comparing the same game on Linux and Windows….but now there is a huge difference.
WE NEED OPEN SOURCE DRIVERS
No, they need to fix the Linux driver. Or if you think that you can fart a better open-source driver in the next 6 months, hey, I’ll take that too. I’m not picky.
Edited 2007-07-19 17:09
Does any of the PureVideo stuff work on Linux/Solaris/BSD?
Even without the HDCP encrypted hi-def output, the accelerated decoding and IDCT would be useful for set top boxes and so on. I googled but all I could find were unanswered questions…
Edited 2007-07-19 17:41
Short answer – no, and it doesn’t look like they have any interest in sharing the specs needed to make it happen.
MPEG1/2 HW-Decoding works on nVidia hardware using XvMC, but the more advanced codecs which really need it aren’t supported.
I don’t believe ATI cards support any acceleration at all in Linux.
VIA Technologies company does support hardware acceleration for more than just MPEG-2 for their S3G UniChrome UniChrome Pro graphics chipsets, they support decoding of motion compensation (mo comp), Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform (iDCT), and Variable-Length Decoding (VLD) for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP (H.263), and MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video.
I don’t believe ATI cards support any acceleration at all in Linux.
Not sure about Linux but under PC-BSD/FreeBSD 6.2 I can watch fullscreen with my Ati Radeon X600 HD format 1280×740 h264 compressed video without slowdown, only problem is sound a bit lagging- maybe some codec problem (6 channels anyway).
So, no need to spread FUD about “bad” opensource drivers.
People, please calm down.
We’ll be happy to compare this card to 100 other cards, and with all alternative operating systems out there. Will you provide us with the cards, and fork over the cash for our time?
OSNews is a voluntary effort, and we do our best. You can’t expect the world from us. We have jobs, university, households, whatevers to run, all besides OSNews. OSNews don’t pay my (nor Eugenia’s or anyone else’s) rent, you see.
Wondering if Eugena tried analoge video out with the 8600GT under Windows Vista. Seems to be a huge short comming with me on my 7600GT with Vista x64. Can’t get component out working.
Luckily Ubuntu64 works very well in this area.
A lot of people in here need to lighten up a bit. If you find some factual error in the article point it out with references to the correct information. You don’t have to read the article if you don’t want to. I for one am glad to see articles like this. I come here because my interests are quite varied and I can always find something of interest.
Anyway, I enjoyed the article. If anyone thinks they can rewrite the article and do a better job then quite complaining and do so. But be forwarned that someone will show you the same courtesy you are showing others. And you may not like it.
Edited 2007-07-20 06:31
The nvidia 8600GT is a nice middle priced card. ATI is lagging behind nvidia with almost all their desktop cards. the only thing to think about is which branch to buy the card from since the chipset choice is an easy one at the moment.