Review: XFX GeForce 8500GT

I figure since I plan on giving one of these away I should, at least, review it.

Since this is the first review, I should probably go over how I plan on doing this. My reviews are targeted towards people who don't necessarily want to know all the numbers and raw data but rather the practical uses for things.





Specs:

Core Clock: 450Mhz
Memory Size: 256MB
Memory Clock: 667Mhz
Memory Interface: 64-Bit
Memory Type: GDDR2


Ok, let me start by saying this: the 8500GT is not the most powerful card in the world. That being said, power isn't everything. This card is entry level. It's meant for someone who is upgrading from a stock card or building a computer on a low budget. If you are a first time PC builder then this is something you want to look at.

It's a smaller card, and will be able to fit into most any case including LANboxes and mini-towers. I find that these are also very silent, the fans never roar and it never heats up too much. Again, this is good if you have a smaller case.

Let's look at what this baby can do. I ran, with this card, Command an Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Jade Empire, Battlefield 2142, and World of Warcraft. All of those games were very playable. C&C3 would play at 20-30FPS (FPS, for those that don't know, means Frames Per Second) at medium settings, Jade Empire (which is a port from PS2) played on it recommended settings with little to no lag, BF2142 played on High settings perfectly, and WoW hovered around 40FPS with medium-high settings.

Then something amazing happened. I bought a second card. If these cards were playable alone, put two in SLI and they become amazing. It will cost about $130 to buy two and they can outperform most other cards in that price range. FPS for all games jumped by about 10, it also let me scale up the graphics.

Now, finally, let me say that if you want to play something like Crysis, then this isn't the card for you. Even in SLI these will choke horribly on that game (or games like the upcoming Farcry 2). But if you're just into MMOs or Counter-Strike type games, then I would suggest this as an excellent purchase.