Print this article

Biostar 8600GTS 512MB (V8603TS51)


Date
: 10/1/07 – 06:39:12 AM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer:
Biostar Group

Price:
$179.99 USD (after MIR)(Newegg.com)

I am not even going to attempt to find out where we are in the graphics processor cycle as it seems that new cards based on new chipsets come out every second month. In reality that gap is a bigger but for someone buried up to their neck in this industry, it doesn't seem like it. Biostar is one of the companies that seem to really be on the rise as far as graphics cards go. I have looked at many Biostar motherboards from their T-Series and video cards from the E-Gate line of graphics processors but we are seeing more and more talk regarding Biostar hardware from the enthusiast realm of the internet.

The last E-Gate graphics processor we checked out from Biostar came with the revolutionary V-Ranger voltage adjustment tool. This was a big step in separating Biostar cards from the rest of the pack who all had similar cards. Biostar won overclockers appreciation with this very innovative step. The V-Ranger tool continues to live on in their 8600GTS 256MB video cards from the newest NVIDIA series of cards but today we will be looking at the 512MB DDR3 version of the 8600GTS. Unfortunately, it does not appear to have the hardware onboard to allow the V-Ranger software to flex its muscles.

The Biostar 8600GTS 512MB DDR3 (V8603TS51) is obviously an 8600GTS chipset based card with 512MB of onboard DDR3 memory. The GPU core is clocked at 675MHz with memory clocking in at 1000MHz for an effect DDR2000 speed on a 128-bit memory BUS. As mentioned, Biostar also offers a 256MB version of this card with exactly the same specifications of core and memory clock speeds but without the extra 256MB of memory (VR8603TS21). The 8600GTS is a very powerful video card without a huge price tag so there should be plenty of interest for a wide audience looking for superior 3D performance on a reasonable budget, it should be fun.

Page 2 : Package

The new NVIDIA chipsets have not brought a new package design for the Biostar video cards, and there really isn't a need to as the Biostar package is well designed and esthetically pleasing already.

Of course a scantily clad female figure with some sort of futuristic weapon type hardware graces the primary location on the front of the package. Apparently this formula works because video card manufacturers have been using it for a long time now. The card type and its basic specifications land along the bottom edge of the box with the NVIDIA marketing logos lining up along the right edge. Again, this design is all pretty much straight from the "Graphics Card Marketing 101" playbook that everyone in the industry seems to be reading from.

The left and right sides of the package are again covered in NVIDIA marketing copy with one side housing the NSIST on NVIDIA slogan with the other providing some features about the 8600 series and minimum system requirements. Note, the power supply recommended is a minimum 350W with 6-pin supplementary power connection.

The top and bottom flaps are simply spill over from the rest of the design with the Biostar and E-Gate logos.

The back of the package is again absolutely covered by NVIDIA feature information that is obviously supplied by NVIDIA based on the design and layout, you will recognize this format from any NVIDIA marketing material or even their web site. There is a bit of useful information back there for the un-educated consumer where they list what graphics series is best for each computer use situation such as Web, DVD playback, HD DVD playback, and a comparison in gaming performance to Intel integrated graphics. The 3D performance isn't really a standard way of doing things but it gives consumers a general comparison of 3D gaming power between newer and older NVIDIA cards.

The interior of the package is the same as any recent Biostar video card I have received with compartments filling the interior. Outside edge compartments are reserved for accessories with the center section designated for protecting the video card inside. Like the exterior design, this is the industry standard by top tier manufacturers these days and it does an excellent job protecting the contents during transport as I have never received a damaged card in a package of this nature.

Page 3 : Specifications & Features

The exciting NVIDIA GeForce 8 series of cards offer a wealth of features and 3D power for gaming. Below are just a few of the plethora of features listed on the NVIDIA web site.

Below is a chart of the different NVIDIA 8 series graphics cards. We can see that the 8600GTS is the highest ranked card below the 8800 cards which means that it should definitely be a very strong performer. Definitely one of the strongest video cards I have looked at in a while.

The chart above shows that the 8600GTS only comes with 256MB of GDDR3 memory but individual partners, such as Biostar, have produced cards with the added 256MB totaling the 512MB that this 8600GTS has on it. Here are the official specifications on the Biostar 8600GTS 512MB GDDR3 from the Biostar web site.

The clock and memory frequencies have not been increased or overclocked from the NVIDIA reference design so that should mean there is some sort of overclocking headroom We will take a look at the overclocking in a couple pages after the installation and software setup. We will now take a look at the Biostar 8600GTS 512MB in the flesh and see another variation from the NVIDIA reference design.

Page 4 : Package Contents

We have gotten a sneak peak at the interior of the package and looked at the specifications and features of the 8600GTS, now let's see what is all provided with this excellent looking video card.

The 8600GTS certainly isn't an entry level card and isn't the top tier graphics processor of the 8000 series graphics cards from NVIDIA. Instead, it sits somewhere between the very top of the mid-range cards and bottom end of the high-end 8800 series. Despite this status symbol, the accessories package is quite basic but there is everything that we would need to fully utilize the features of the card. We get a nice sized manual, driver and software CD, a single DVI > VGA adapter, a dual 4-pin Molex > 6-pin PCI-E connector, and the video breakout cable that gives us S-Video and Component video leads.

The obvious standout on this Biostar 8600GTS when first looking at the card is the relatively large cooler used for the GPU core. In reality the cooler isn't that large as we will see in the coming photos but it certainly isn't the standard cooler that ships with NVIDIA reference cards. The other item of note is the additional power connection at the rear of the card which we already knew would be required from the specifications section.

The fan on this cooler is much larger which should be a blessing when it comes to fan noise compared to a reference cooler. The large amount of cooling surface area from the fins and pure mass of the cooler should really provide more than ample cooling. The design will also help remove hot air from building up around the rest of the components on the card as air will be pushed out from the cooling fins and swept across the entire surface of the card.

The power plant for this card is all located at the rear of the package and as stated, the air being pushed out around the heatsink will help keep a fresh supply of air over this area as well. The additional 6-pin PCI-E power connector is located in the standard spot and we can see that Biostar has used a number of solid Conductive Polymer Aluminum capacitors back here in addition to traditional aluminum electrolytic capacitors.

The electrolytic capacitors are all high quality United Chemi-Con KY and KZG models. Both feature max temperatures of 105C with operating hours over 2000 at that temperature. These most definitely will not be running at that high of temps so you can be sure to get a lot more than 2000 hours of run time on them, probably closer to 10,000+.

Upon looking at the card from various angles, I noticed that the heatsink fins are actually off-set slightly and do not sit directly above the core. It took my half asleep brain to figure out why but it is so that the large fins from the heatsink allow the card to fit in a PCI-E slot…I am not bright sometimes early in the morning. We can also see that the height of the heatsink is only about 1.25" to 1.5". Basically the same height as any double slot cooler so there will likely be a slot blockage on some motherboards. We will look for this in the Installation section shortly.

Taking the heatsink off showed an excellent thermal paste application without gobs of excess thermal paste everywhere and the contact patch is near perfect. The underside of the heatsink isn't perfectly smooth with very shallow grooves machined in the face of the heatsink. Perhaps a quick lapping could even further increase the cooling potential of this high performance heatsink. The core is obviously the NVIDIA G84 core and the memory used on this Biostar 8600GTS 512MB is Samsung K4J52324QE-BJ1A. This memory is pretty much the highest end GDDR3 that is available right now and present on almost all major brand 8800GTX cards. The BJ1A indicates this is 1.0ns (1000MHz) memory that requires only 1.8v to do so. This means that there won't be much headroom for memory overclocking on stock volts but with the fastest memory already maxed out, who really needs to overclock it?

The two dual-link DVI connections are capable of running large displays up to and beyond the likes of 30" LCD monitors, unfortunately I won't be able to put that claim to the test unless Dell wants to send me a couple of boxes that I would gladly not turn down. There is also the s-video connection which doubles as a connection for the break-out cable that provides component connections.

Having 512MB of on-board memory means that we also have some BGA packages on the backside but other than that, just a few identification and serial number stickers. The heatsink mounting screws are small and compact which will not pose a problem during installation. Speaking of installation, let's get to that portion of the evenings program now.

Page 5 : Installation

The installation of this 8600GTS shouldn't cause any issues in a standard setup as the length of the card is only slightly more than the Biostar 7600GS or PowerColor HD2600 but I will still take a couple photos of the card mounted in a few motherboards to provide some perspective on the size of the cooler.

Starting off in the Asus P5K3 we can see that the heatsink does appear to hang over the PCI slots directly below the PCI-E 16X but the length of the card barely extends out over the southbridge heatsink but does appear to block the first couple of memory slots.

Upon further investigation we can see that the memory slot still has no problem opening with the 8600GTS in place. This is really up to the motherboard designer anyway because there are other video cards out there that are much longer than the Biostar 8600GTS. I will also note that the heatsink only covers the first PCI slot leaving just enough room for the second one down to be used in the P5K3 Deluxe.

A quick jump over to the P5N32-E SLI produces very similar results with only the slot directly below the 16X PCI-E slot that the card occupies is being interfered with leaving the middle 16X PCI-E open and free for use. We can clearly see that the heatsink may look large, it is no bigger than any dual slot cooler and shouldn't cause any more headaches that the reference design does…and work much better and quieter.

Jumping into the test board, the Asus P5B Deluxe, we see the same situation unfolding for us that the other two motherboards provided. Only one slot being blocked and memory coming close, but not being blocked by the card. Obviously Asus tends to design their layouts with this type of card in mind and the 8600GTS fits into these motherboards without any issues.

There is even plenty of space behind the video card thanks to the rather small screw heads that hold the heatsink in place. The Noctua NC-U6 shown above has lots of breathing room around it with the Biostar 8600GTS in the top slot. Again, this is really a product of the well thought out Asus layout and not so much the Biostar video card. The 8600GTS 512MB simply doesn't throw any extra kinks into the mix that would adversely affect its ability to mount in most motherboards if not all.

Page 6 : Test Setup, Software, & OC’ing

Test Setup:

On this page, we will take a look at the test platform used for the benchmarks as well as a quick look at the software included with the Biostar 8600GTS. I will also be pushing the card a little further with some overclocking of the GPU core and memory on board. Since this card is at the top of the 8600 series I do expect to see some overhead for the overclocking section. First though, let's see a little more information about the bench setup used for this review:

I recently completed a review of a PowerColor HD2600 Pro which was the first video card I have looked at on this setup but it worked out really well and I will continue to use this setup for my video card testing. Unfortunately I don't have any higher-end video cards to compare the 8600GTS to as I was un-aware this hardware was coming in for testing and un-able to prepare a better comparison. I would like to, at some point, add 8600GTS 256MB or even 8800GTS 320MB results to the charts on the following pages but for today, we are going to have to settle for the Biostar 7600GS as the main competition.

Software:

Installing the software for the 8600GTS went as smoothly as any NVIDIA ForceWare installation. NVIDIA drivers never seem to cause an issue with any of my systems and they always seem very stable at time of release with no missing or handy-capped features. As listed above, we can see that the ForceWare driver version is 162.18 and that the card is correctly recognized as the GeForce 8600GTS with 512MB of memory. The next software installation is going to be of the Biostar Turboclock 2 / V-Ranger tool.

Dropping the CD that came with the Biostar 8600GTS in the optical drive brings up a simple menu with a few options for the various software. I personally recommend downloading the latest drivers from the NVIDIA web site but for the average user having a nice simple menu like this with all available install options is appreciated. An option for automatically installing all the software may also be welcome for some users.

After installing the Biostar Turboclock 2 / V-Ranger tool I immediately opened it up to see what kind of voltage options were going to be available through the ground breaking V-Ranger tool but was quickly disappointed to see that voltage adjustments were not possible with this card. Going back to the Biostar web site I noticed that the 256MB version of this card has V-Ranger voltage adjustments listed in the specs but the 512MB version did not. Now why would you do that to me Biostar? I was excited for some software voltage adjusting to test with my new GPU dry ice pot but it was not to be. Hard mods will be needed to maximize the cards benchmark potential with cooling at sub-zero temperatures.

Temperatures with Stock Cooling:

The next step before overclocking the Biostar 8600GTS was to see what kind of temperatures the core was going to reach on stock cooling at the stock frequencies. For this I used ATITool because I still find its Scanning For Artifacts feature to heat up video cards the best and most predictably. After about 10 minutes, the core temperature leveled out at around 52C and would hover up to 54C and as low as 50C. The screenshot shows this trend at the 33 minute mark. The fan speed is not controllable but the fan noise is very minimal as the fan is almost 70mm and doesn't need to spin at a high RPM to provide adequate cooling. We will soon find out if the cooler is capable of handling a little bit more of a load with a core clock increase by overclocking the 8600GTS 512MB from Biostar.

Overclocking with Stock Cooling:

Overclocking the Biostar 8600GTS 512MB went relatively well with some solid overhead to be had on the GPU core but the memory is already pushed to the limits running at the stock frequency of 1000MHz. To test the stability of the overclocks I put the card through a 1 hour torture test of looping 3DMark 06 'Deep Freeze' & 'Firefly' tests. In conjunction to the 3DMark 06 runs, I like to run the entire suite of 3DMark from 01 up to 06 a few times through as sometimes 3DMark 03 will cause issues that 06 doesn't. On top of about 3 good hours of constant 3DMark runs, I force myself to play a couple of my favorite games including BF 2142 and FarCry…okay so it doesn't take much to force me to play each game for a couple hours each at the final overclock frequencies.

RivaTuner 2.03 was used for the overclocking but I also found ATITool 0.26to work perfectly fine with this card/driver set as well and used it for some of the temperature testing that we just saw. The stock frequency of 675MHz was stable at a substantially higher clock speed for a
Core Overclock of 783MHz
and was semi-stable up to 795MHz for some benchmarks. The memory pushed slightly further exceeding the stock clocks by only 44MHz for a
Memory Overclock of 1044MHz (DDR2088)
.

It is also worth noting that the GPU core temperature did not exceed 54C according to RivaTuner at any time during the entire overclocking process which leads me to believe that the heatsink/fan combination that Biostar has upgraded from the reference design was a very good choice and looks to be able to handle more than even I can through at it. Again, it leaves me wishing for V-Ranger to allow voltage adjustments on this card so I could really test the cooling capabilities.

Page 7 : Synthetic Benchmarks

The whole suite of the 3DMark series from Futuremark will be run for the video cards today, like I always do. I have had e-mails from readers asking why I bother with the older benchmarks like 3DMark 01 and I tell them it is because they are still relevant and besides, 3DMark 01 is still the best 3D benchmark there is.

It is going to be pretty obvious that I was correct in thinking I didn't have a very good comparison card for this Biostar 8600GTS because nothing else I have can come close to touching it in the 3DMark series. When overclocked, the Biostar 8600GTS almost clips 50,000 points in 3DMark 01. To reach 50,000 with the 7600GS it has to be overclocked to 715MHz/850MHz with a CPU running around 4.4GHz. With the right driver tweaks, I can easily do that with this 8600GTS without cracking 3.6GHz on my E6600. 3DMark 05 and 06 also show the 8600GTS to be heads and tails above the crowd…the gaming benchmarks we are about to look at should shine a similar pattern of light.

Page 8 : FarCry Benchmarks

I have mentioned a couple of times that I just finished up an HD2600 Pro review so I will simply quote my benchmark method from that review.

I don't play FarCry that often anymore but anytime I benchmark it I get the urge to play a few levels and easily fall back into that mode where I can't stop. When Crysis comes out this fall it is going to be hard to get any work or sleep accomplished because FarCry is great but Crysis makes it look like Mario Brothers in comparison. Let's see how well the 8600GTS handled this oldie but goodie.

The gap between the middle of the pack and the Biostar 8600GTS is not that big in FarCry and that is because FarCry isn't the most demanding on newer video cards. At 1680×1050 the game is stunning and perfectly playable with details maxed on the 8600GTS 512MB. That means full shadows from trees and everything which really need to be on to feel the full effects of the jungle in my opinion.

Page 9 : Half-Life 2 Benchmarks

Still revered as a favorite on-line time killer amongst gamers, HL2, will be a must on any benchmark list for quite some time.

To benchmark HL2 I simply use the in-game time demo feature and benchmark a time demo of the Coast level with detail levels all set to high. I fully anticipated similar results that were just seen in the FarCry benchmarks with the gap between the GPUs to not be that much but as we can see in the chart directly below, my anticipation was quite wrong.

The closest competitor, the Biostar 7600GS, is a whopping %40 behind at 1680×1050. In fact, with 4XAA and 8XAF, the Biostar 8600GTS still had a higher frames rate than the 7600GS. Clearly the 8600GTS is no match for Half-Life 2 at the typical 20" wide screen resolution of 1680×1050 which isn't a huge accomplishment as all the cards tested can easily run HL2 at that resolution but it does look like the 8600GTS is a great performer in the $200 range. Let's see some more gaming benchmark results.

Page 10 : F.E.A.R. Benchmarks

Clipped from a previous review:

Previous testing with the other video cards had soft shadows turned off as it would have hurt performance on them. The results we are about to see tell us that benchmarking F.E.A.R. with soft shadows on wouldn't be a problem for the Biostar 8600GTS 512MB.

It really isn't a competition anymore as the games get newer and make the GPU work harder. F.E.A.R. has been a graphics card killer from the day it came out but it appears that the NVIDIA 8 series has finally brought it to its knees with a whopping 81 frames per second at 1280×960. 4XAF/8XAF still hinders performance drastically but without it, F.E.A.R. runs as smooth as silk.

Page 11 : Call of Duty 2 Benchmarks

A WWII reality based first person shooter, Call of Duty sequels the original and improved immensely on the initial game. There are a number of campaigns and options to play as giving COD2 a lot of replay value. The performance of the PC version of the game has never been that good and many have complained about this. The benchmark results will reflect this as the numbers don't look that impressive so concentrate on the differences between the cards and not the actual FPS.

I used another HOC benchmarking utility combined with FRAPS in order to get the results below. The HOC utility didn't quite work as good as their other benchmark utilities but I still managed to get an accurate and repeatable benchmark of all the video cards. Unfortunately because of the HOC utilities problems, I am not sure what the detail levels were set to but I believe they were on high based on the image quality during the process.

Call of Duty 2 is just another example of how powerful the 8600GTS is compared with the mid-range of previous generations of video cards. Another good comparison for this card would be the 8600GT and hopefully at some point I will have an 8600GT here for testing as I will certainly compare it to the GTS. As it stands, if you don't have the money required for an 8800GTS 320MB, a card like the Biostar 8600GTS 512MB would be an excellent choice without compromising too much performance. Especially if you are gaming at 1680×1050 or less.

Page 12 : Company of Heroes (In Game Benchmark)

Last years fall release schedule produced a lot of winning games including Company of Heroes. A real-time strategy war game, Company of Heroes has put life back into a segment of the gaming industry striving for something fresh.

The benchmarking done with this game, however, doesn't have much to do with actual game play. The in-game benchmark is comprised of a cut-scenes and not actual game play. Many don't understand this benchmarking method but it is a good way to compare video cards across platforms with easy and repeatable results.

The results of the in-game benchmark of Company of Heroes paints a similar picture to all other benchmarks we have looked at so far. The 8600GTS shows a decided advantage and even with 4XAA/8XAF, the Biostar 8600GTS easily performs better than the other cards but AA/AF had very little on performance so I am going to say there is very little effect on the in-game benchmark.

Page 13 : Battlefield 2142 Benchmarks

For the last year gamers all over the world have been climbing ranks in EA Sports popular BattleField 2142. The BF series has become extremely popular for the on-line statistics tracking, ranking system, and in-game awards that un-lock more features. Aside from the incredible action and realistic environments, the game engine is one of a kind and used solely by EA Games but is quite fluid and refined making BF2142 one of the best first person shooters of the past year.

Just another clip from a previous review outlining the benchmark method:

There isn't much here to report that we haven't seen already in the above results from BF2142. Gaming at 1680×1050 with 4XAA and 8XAF is smooth enough for most anyone to play and without AA, the game plays like butter at the maximum resolution of my 22" LCD. The BattleField engine has never required a hefty video card at respectable resolutions but with the details set to maximum, BF2142 can really put a lot of pressure on the GPU and the Biostar 8600GTS 512MB showed it was up for the challenge.

Page 14 : Bioshock (Demo) Benchmarks

It's the 1950's and an underwater world has gone terribly wrong leaving the place a wasteland full of creatures that could be from another planet. In reality, the creatures are humans with altered DNA and we are left to fight through a mess of freaks wielding all kinds of weapons and 'super-human' abilities. Along the way we get to obtain some trick weapons of our own and cause all kinds of damage. This first person shooter from 2K Games is unique in a number of ways and certainly worth the download and a run through the demo for any first person shooter or sci-fi fans.

The method for the testing is as follows:

In comparison to the other benchmarks, the HD260 Pro numbers put up here are quite different but trust me, they are legitimate and the gap between the two cards isn't that much here in Bioshock. When I first started testing this 8600GTS I was fully expecting it to be a lot stronger in the Bioshock demo based on the new HD2600 pro results but the 8600GTS had a tough time with this game as well. Keep in mind the game had been out for only a few days when I did the benchmarking and there haven't been driver updates from NVIDIA since but I am sure performance will increase from a new set of drivers at some point. Even still, the 8600GTS still easily outperforms all the other cards. The lack of results from the X800 GTO are because Bioshock is a SM3.0 game only. There are some hacks for running it on SM2.0 card but I haven't been able to get the X800 GTO to run it yet.

Page 15 : Conclusion

Every fall the video game silly season starts with a flurry of new releases unleashed on gamers. The nights are no longer filled with the same hot air that is present throughout the afternoon, carrying a hint of cool upon the wings of the breeze once the sun goes down. The leaves of the trees are just on the cusp of turning away from their green summer wear into their drab pre-winter browns, yellows, and oranges. These signs are all indicating that the fall video game season is so close that you can already feel your 2000dpi mouse start to twitch with anticipation. In fact, with recent releases like Bioshock, one could say that the season has officially opened.

When video games are the hot topic, quickly to follow in the conversation are video cards. This is where the Biostar 8600GTS 512MB steps up and lets itself be heard. Standing tall at the top of the mid-range market, today we saw that the 8600GTS was clearly no match for the rest of the graphics processors that I put it up against. We knew the opponents were out-gunned before we even started the testing but I wasn't sure if my 22" 1680×1050 LCD monitor was going to pose a challenge for the Biostar 8600GTS 512MB…it didn't. Every game tested was easily playable at the maximum resolution the monitor could spit out with in-game details turned as high as they would.

The impressive heatsink/fan assembly went above and beyond its job duties in keeping the GPU cool both at stock and in an overclocked state while maintaining a covert presence that would be hard to find with any case fan within arms reach. The one pitfall for the extreme overclocker such as myself is the lack of the V-Ranger voltage adjustment capabilities, along with the price tag. At $45USD more expensive than the 256MB brother which does offer real-time software based voltages adjustments, it is hard to really recommend the 512MB card without seeing some benchmarks first as the 256MB version is a steal at $140USD (after MIR).

Advantages

• Higher than mid-range performance

• Excellent cooling that is whisper quiet
• Small footprint that will fit most any setup without causing headaches
• Plenty of bang for the buck

Disadvantages

• No V-Ranger voltage adjustment…why Biostar, why you do this to me?

• Is 512MB really worth $40USD more than 256MB?

Overclockers Online would like to thank Biostar Group for making this review possible.