XFX GeForce 8600 GT 620M XXX Edition

Overclocking:

After a few hours of tweaking and testing, we managed to get XFX's GeForce 8600 GT 620M XXX Edition running stable at 685MHz core, 1512MHz on the shader clock and 868MHz (1736MHz effective) on the memory. At higher GPU clocks, the driver would crash and reset itself and at higher memory clocks, we suffered from a lot of tearing in all of the games we tested.

These clock speed increases are impressive to say the least, especially considering the fact that we've managed to get the core speed higher than Nvidia's GeForce 8600 GTS, which requires a power connector. Additionally, XFX doesn't appear to be clocking the GPU to its maximum frequency out of the box, like we felt it had done with its GeForce 8800 Ultra 650M Extreme card, and finally the memory had quite a bit of headroom in it, despite only being rated to 1428MHz (effective).

At these clocks, the card didn't quite outperform a stock-clocked GeForce 8600 GTS, but it wasn't far off at all. In Company of Heroes, for example, we managed to achieve 23.6 frames per second at 1280x1024 0xAA 16xAF with medium quality settings using the DirectX 10 renderpath. In comparison, our stock-clocked GeForce 8600 GTS delivered a frame rate of 24 fps at the same settings - not bad!

Final Thoughts...

Despite the lack of HDCP support in the current version, XFX’s GeForce 8600 GT XXX Edition is probably one of the best bang for buck mid-range DirectX 10 graphics cards out there. From as little as £90 including VAT, the card delivers performance that is not too far off Nvidia’s GeForce 8600 GTS and, with a bit of overclocking, you can achieve practically the same performance as the 8600 GTS.

The cheapest GeForce 8600 GTS out there today will cost you around £110 (inc. VAT), which is another £20 more than the XFX GeForce 8600 GT 620M XXX Edition. First, you have to first ask yourself whether the extra £20 that XFX’s card costs over a standard clocked 8600 GT is worth spending, and then you have to ask yourself if it’s worth spending another £20 to get an 8600 GTS. Stretching to £90 would be worthwhile, in my opinion, but stretching to £110 will not make as much of a difference.

This, of course, is providing you want DirectX 10 support in many of the titles that are coming out this year. If DirectX 10 doesn’t really bother you, then you could certainly argue that the Radeon X1950 Pro is still a solid buy at around £87 (inc. VAT), but in the more recent titles we’ve tested here, the XFX manages to stand up to it pretty well.

For those that want to eventually use a card like this for HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc playback, you’re going to have to look elsewhere. However, as a card purely for gaming, XFX’s GeForce 8600 GT XXX Edition pretty good value at around £90 (inc. VAT), as it brings reasonably good performance and DirectX 10 support to the table at an affordable price point.

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