Much like the GTS which we reviewed on launch day the 8600GT is aimed at
the price-conscious consumer who still wants to play today’s games
at reasonable resolutions. Just like its bigger brother the GT fully
supports the DirectX 10 standard and has an impressive array of video
decoding features under the hood. But whereas the GTS has two HDCP enabled
DUAL-DVI connectors by default, it was left up to the individual card
manufacturers to decide whether they would add HDCP support to the GT or
not.

A reference 8600GT is otherwise more or less a downclocked version of the
GTS (the reduced power consumption lead to the removal of the PCI power
connector), as both cards have the same amount of stream processors, are
fabricated with 80nm technology and have a 128bit memory interface. Just
like the GTS the 8600 GT is also very effective at handling textures (in
certain situations even better than the 8800 series). By default the
8600GT cores are running at 540Mhz while the memory is set to 700Mhz
(1400Mhz DDR). The shader clock runs at a high 1,19Ghz. All in all a very
impressive board, especially considering its price starts at $150.

Full Story at DriverHeaven.net