Power Consumption and Thoughts

Power Consumption

The E4300 in our test system was run at stock clocks for this test, with Galaxy's 8600 GE showing a little more at the wall than the outgoing mid-range GeForce 7600 GT. GeForce 8800 GTX shows excellent performance-per-watt here, if you can stomach a system that asks for around 300W at the wall!

Thoughts

Our major concerns about the Galaxy GeForce 8600 GE center around its availability. Looking at other Galaxy board evaluations around the web, it's clear their combination of cooler changes and keen pricing for the usually-overclocked performance is a fine combination. Looking at our analysis, we come away impressed with performance versus GeForce 7600 GT, and with the board's physical properties in terms of the cooler and power consumption.

However, we challenge you to find it for sale anywhere in Western Europe or North America, with it scarce even in Asia from the looks for things. Galaxy need to step up their presence in major sales territories for mid-range graphics add-in boards, which we hope they do because they offer attractive products. Coming out looking good in an analysis doesn't mean much if you then can't sell it to the very folks who might be interested.

So a very decent mid-range graphics offering, if not outstanding in terms of performance (and that's arguably not Galaxy's fault, they can only work within the GPU and AIB boundaries they're set by NVIDIA), but one which you'll struggle to find on sale. If and when Galaxy let us know where to find the GeForce 8600 GE on sale in the markets we mention, we'll let you know.

Update

Galaxy got in touch to let us know that Target Components are the new distributor for Galaxy goodness in the UK, and you can get in touch with sales on 0870 787 1999, or via sales@targetcomponents.co.uk.  Alternatively, you can order online, although you have to login just to browse pricing.

We can't see the reviewed GeForce 8600 GE in Target's list, but they've got a bunch of Galaxy's other GeForce 8s listed, and some of the older 7-series parts as well.  Thanks for the update, Igor!

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