ASUS GeForce 8600GT OC Gear 256MB

Examination:

While a passive GPU cooler is suffice for the NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT (as we had seen with the Gigabyte version), used by the EN8600GT OC GEAR/HTDP/256M is an ASUS Gaming Series heatsink. This is basically the same heatsink that we found on the ASUS Radeon HD 2600PRO. This actively cooled copper heatsink cools the GPU die but does not assist in cooling the video memory. ASUS claims that this heatsink will lower the GPU temperature by up to 14° Celsius compared to the NVIDIA reference design.

The video memory used on the ASUS 8600GT is manufactured by Qimonda with a part number of HYB18H512321BF-10. While ASUS has this DDR3 memory running at 700MHz, this part is actually rated to run at 1.00GHz and access speed of 1.0ns. So right there you already have quite a bit of overclocking headway for the video memory.

The GeForce 8600GT has enough power provided by the PCI Express x16 interface; therefore, no 6-pin (or 8-pin) PCI Express power connector is needed on this graphics card. On the opposite side of the PCB there are the four screws that keep the ASUS Gaming Series heatsink in place.

The ASUS EN8600GT OC Gear has two DVI connectors support HDTV out and S-Video via the included cable. The 8600GT series also supports NVIDIA's SLI.

Now onto the ASUS OC Gear. This real-time hardware-overclocking device is intended to be installed into a chassis's external 5.25" drive bay. On the front of the device is an LCD panel as well as a large dial for tuning the GPU frequencies. Displayed on the front panel are the system master volume, GPU speed, GPU temperature, the current frame-rate while gaming, and the GPU fan speed. In addition to overclocking the GPU, OC Gear also supports adjusting the system volume and the GPU fan speed. On the back of the device is the USB connector for interfacing with the motherboard's 4-pin USB 2.0 header.