Contradicting 8600 GTS reviews

[shadowofthesun]

The first two reviews I read on the 8600 GTS offer drastically different views. In some cases, they are outright contradictory. The first review is from AT (I won't provide the link seeing as you are hopefully competent enough to find the homepage). On page 7, the review states:

The 8600 GTS is able to keep up with its competition from AMD, but lags quite a bit behind the 7950 GT. The 8600 GT isn't able to hold its own against current $150 offerings, but it does at least stay ahead of the 7600 GT which held the $150 line for quite a while.

Looking at the accompanying graph, the 8600 is behind the 1950 PRO, if only just.

On the other hand, over at Elite Bastards, the 8600GTS is shown as ahead in PREY. On page 6 of the review:

NVIDIA and OpenGL performance have traditionally gone together like fish and chips, so seeing the GeForce 8600 GTS top the pile, albeit by the smallest of margins, is no surprise here.

Also, on page 7 of the EB review, FEAR performance is shown in favor of the 8600 GTS, and this margin grows after AA is enabled- the polar opposite of most of the results on AT's on review.

HardOCP I believe released a favorable review of the 8600GTS as well, while I have heard that many other reviews have painted a mostly negative picture of this card.

What is going on?

 

[aka1nas]

On the elite bastards review, the X1950 Pro beat the 8600GTS in every Prey benchmark except the 1024x768 no AA/AF, which was obviously CPU limited. It only won by 1 or 2 fps, which is within the margin of error for such a test.

 

[hectorsm]

A lot depends on how they test the card.

I can see how the 8600GTS doing a little bad in higher res with AA. The 128bit memory interface and the 256MB RAM will hold it back. But most people won't be using the cards that way. That is why it is consider a mainstream card. Enthusiast usually will buy a higher end card.

I do agree that the current price is a little high right now.