Asus EN8600GTS Top

Review Pages

1. Introduction
2. Tests and Setup
3. 3D Mark 05 - 3D Mark 06
4. F.E.A.R.
5. Prey
6. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
7. Half Life 2 Episode 1
8. Company Of Heroes (DirectX9 & 10)
9. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (GRAW2)
10. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (DirectX9 & 10)
11. Call Of Juarez (DirectX 10)
12. Overclocking
13. Conclusion

- Conclusion

Asus' support for Nvidia comes with the release of an overclocked 8600GTS based product, the "8600GTS Top" that has higher performance than reference based 8600GTS Nvidia cards. The 8600GTS series fully supports DirectX10 geometry shaders, offering superb visual quality, when of course the game supports it.

In this review, we include many DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 games. The performance of the Asus EN8600GTS Top was a mixed bag since in several games, it didn't perform any better than the Asus EN7900GS or PowerColor X1950Pro. We could see a clear performance difference when we raised AA from 4x to 8x, but this setting cannot be properly handled by 8600GTS series. With DirectX10 games, the performance was mediocre, so it is also not the best possible solution for hardcore gamers.

The card supports HDCP output so we can consider it as a futureproof buy. The only question is how much would you spend for an Asus EN8600GTS Top. We found the card available at online stores for €250, when an Asus EN7900GS Top costs "only" €170! On the other hand, an Asus 8800GTS 320MB costs around €289, which is obviously a better priced product for middle-to-hardcore gamers.

We can see a good market for the Asus EN8600GTS Top, but only if the price was much lower, with a clear price gap from the 8800 series...