Thoughts

Hark back to the introduction and you'll see us blather on about our imagined G84 and how it compares to what eventually arrived. Revisiting that, we expected what was essentially half a G80 in the shading core, with four clusters and their associated shadering and sampling abilities and rates, and two of G80's ROP partitions to satisfy the needs for a cheap 128-bit memory bus while maintaining decent performance versus G73 and friends.

With half what we expected in the shading core, but with a small boost in sampler addressing power, we feel slightly robbed. Harsh? Maybe. Would such a configuration be doable in a decent sized mid-range GPU at 80nm, given they aren't using NVIO and have added video processing logic? Probably not, and using large chips in the mid-range isn't NVIDIA's cup of tea, so it seems we misjudged it a little.

What's arrived is a GPU with performance to comfortably see off GeForce 7600 GT on paper, but one which we feel will struggle against other current $199 parts such as 7900 GS and ATI's Radeon X1950 PRO. We're sure that'll be shown in game performance measurements, both here when we get round to it and elsewhere today, as NDA expires. Obviously, the architecture also has some advantages, so it will win certain benchmarks, but given the specs, it seems completely impossible for it to be a clear-cut victory against the parts it is really competing against today.

Is D3D10 support and the new video processing ability enough to swing it? For some, when the kinks are ironed out -- which would include making sure common media players get accleration and that it works well in more than just Vista x86 -- the video processing ability will be a distinct draw. Providing our testing will show G84 able to do high bitrate protected MPEG-4/AVC, it seems a very nice add to the silicon, at least when the software issues are lessened.

As for D3D10 support, we'll wait until our D3D10 tools are done and more games are around (and AMD's competing parts of course!) before we come down on either side of that particular fence. Given the lower ALU:TEX ratio, however, it also remains to be seen how that'll affect it in future titles.

As it stands today, G84 feels unbalanced in terms of general rendering performance and thus in that area not that well equipped to take on the challenges of the other products around at $199, where GeForce 8600 GTS sits. As for 8600 GT, we hope HDCP-less cards are significantly cheaper, since their overall appeal diminishes significantly without the means to best get video out of itself, as its clock rates fall away from GTS.

XFX's GeForce 8600 GTS XXX

With GRAW in the bundle and assuming a keen price, XFX's board seems like one for the shopping list if 8600 GTS is what you're looking to pick up. Keep an eye on pricing though, especially if the video hardware isn't a factor for you or you simply can't make use of it right now because of the software situation. We'll keep you abreast of that changing.

Sorry to XFX again, but a full eval of the SKU pair they seeded in for launch will have to wait a little while, from the gamer's perspective!

Comments on this review? Feel free to let us know what you think in our forum thread!