PNY Verto GeForce 8600GT Overclocked (PCI-e, 512MB)

Summary: I have an Hp Tower with AMD 64 3500+ ;1.5 gig ram; 7200 rpm Hard drive; and (had) a poo-poo intergrated ATI 64mb (SHARED !! ack!) video chipset. I moved up to a BFG 8500gt and it ran everything fairly well, but I noticed it would hickup between frames even if it was runing smooth. This was observed on some higher demanding video processing for Windows Media such as Plasmavis, even while playing WoW! I wasnt so happy with this, even on WoW I would run40-30 fps, and sometimes dip sub 30s (not fun! espesialy if you are only WoWing) I decided to up the ante to the 8600 GT OC, noticed no hic ups, fram rate NEVER diped again for any program even while running multi apps such as Adobe CS2+Internet Explorer+Downloads+WoW !!, and the preformance for the 512 GDDR3 ram ,over clocked specs over the 8500 GT with its slower DDR2 ram and much slower processing, I find that it is just not a worthy investment to by a 8500 gt (additionaly, the same 8600gt OC chipset from BFG has slightly slower specs, plus YOU PAY MORE ! what?!) I urge anyone who cannot pay 300+ for an 8800 series to seriously not waste their money with the sub 8500 GT series and save the 50-70$ more for the 8600 GT OC for an investment that will last you MUCH longer than the 8500 series

Summary: I was lucky enough to find this card for $119.00 during the Black Friday sale at CompUSA. I had to call 5 stores in town before I was able to find a store that had one left. This card was installed and drivers updated in about 20 mins. This was a upgrade from a ATI 1900 Pro and I was blown away from the minute I fired it up. I have been playing Gears of War and the Orange Box all on the highest settings. This card has been so nice that it has enticed me to upgrade my monitor to a 24'' Dell UltraSharp so I can realy see waht she will do. The new monitor should be here on Wednesday. Then I will go out and get Crysis so I can really put it to the test. I will update my review in a few weeks and let you all know how things go.

This is a great choice for anyone who does not have deep enough pockets to just run out and get one of the high end 8800 series cards.