BFG GeForce 8600GTS OC2 Review

The Card:

The first thing you notice when looking at the BFG GeForce 8600GTS OC2 is that the card does not use NVIDIA’s reference GeForce 8600GTS cooling unit. With the GeForce 8600 series, BFG is introducing a new cooling brand called Thermo Intelligence. The Thermo Intelligence series will be exclusive to BFG with the goal of bringing powerful and quiet single slot cooling to select cards in the BFG product line. BFG plans to bring water cooled units to market in the near future, but currently the custom designed coolers are only available with the GeForce 8600GTS OC2 and GeForce 8600GT OC2.

In addition to the new cooling design, BFG is also using their traditional teal colored PCB with the GeForce 8600GTS OC2. The card itself measures 7.25 inches in length, has dual DVI inputs, HDTV output (full 720p/1080p compatibility), and of course features an SLI connector.

When we look at the back of the card, we can see the six pin PCI Express power connector needed to power it, and a bare back of the card with no memory chips. As we saw with our review of this HIS Radeon HD 2600 Pro IceQ Turbo, adding extra memory to a mainstream graphics card always doesn’t translate into any measurable performance improvements unless you are gaming at ultra-high resolutions (which you won’t be with a mainstream card), so BFG’s decision to stick with 256MB of memory on the 8600GTS OC2 is easily justifiable.