Guru3D takes a further look at the XFX GeForce 8600 GT Fatal1ty Edition, a product which will bring a couple of new features to the existing product line for sure. The Fata1ty Geforce 8600 GT graphics card comes with it's GPU core pre-overclocked at 620 MHz and 256MB memory clocked at (2x) 850 MHz. That's not that special, yet it's doing that while being passively cooled; and that makes it a rather special product:

None the less, you can purchase the product at roughly 170 EUR/USD and quite honestly, the passive cooler alone makes that a worthy purchase. It's already comes pre-overclocked, yet can be clocked even better, also I like the black dark color theme this card has, it makes it stand out from the rest for sure. Combine that with the two years warranty that's a good deal. I do have to say that if you plan to buy it at like 170-180 USD then the GTS becomes an option as well, it will offer roughly the same performance though.

More general speaking, the GT is a product series for those with a 1024x769 or 1280x1024 pixels sized monitor. It'll offer you decent 3D gaming performance and will allow you to enable AA and AF in most situations as well. We have not discussed this in the article obviously the card is a great card for multimedia playback as well. Combine it with the proper playback software or PureVideo and it'll even decode and enhance HD content over the GPU (except for VC-1 !). Disappointing to see is that the card is not HDCP compatible. Aimed at the audience as a full Vista ready product and the fact that we live in 2007 .. I say all current generation mid-range cards should have it.

With the 8600 Series of products comes a DX10 capable product (backwards compatible obviously). This XFX graphics card is offering decent performance up-to a resolution of 1280x1024 in most games which makes it an interesting product for a lot of you on that 170 USD/EUR budget.