A Closer Look

The cooler is made by Zalman, it is a full aluminum design to keep weight and cost down. Even though the fan can be heard it is not too loud and does not stand out over the rest of your system fans.


Even though the ramsinks are just basic pieces of aluminum they seem to help with overclocking. Please be advised that the sticky tape they are attached with is very strong. Unless carefully removed there is a chance that you rip a memory chip off the PCB.


The cooler is mounted with only two screws, a sticker is placed on one of the screws, to ensure the user does not remove his cooler, break the card and then RMAs it.


SLI is possible by combining this card with any other 8600 GT card from any manufacturer. Depending on the configuration of the second card, the 8600 GT Turbo may clock down to match the other card's clock speeds.


An additional power connector is not required for operation of this card. All power is supplied via the PCI-Express bus.


Four GDDR3 memory chips are installed on the GPU side of the card, as mentioned before the solder pads on the other side are empty.


The GDDR3 memory chips are made by Qimonda (formerly Infineon) and carry the model number HYB18H512321BF-10 with an access speed of 1.0 ns, which means they should be good for 1000 MHz at least.


The GPU is the NVIDIA G84 Revision A2. Please note the black plastic shim around the GPU, which helps avoid damage to the silicon when the cooler is being installed or when sideways force is applied to the cooler when the card is handled.