XFX 8500 GT

Since the launch of its G80 range of products last year, Nvidia has pretty much been dominating the graphics card market. Though ATI/AMD recently unveiled its range of DX10 cards, their reception and availability is tiny, compared to the rather surprising dominance that Nvidia’s DX10 cards have managed to receive. The best ATI can offer is the Radeon HD 2900 XT, which is a GeForce 8800 GTS competitor, leaving Nvidia the clear winner for now in the enthusiast market with its 8800 GTX / GTX XXX series of cards.

Having conquered the niche segment, Nvidia has recently turned its eye at the far more important budget card market. This segment is without question the most important for both companies as bulk of their respective revenues comes from here. Nvidia keeping this in mind has recently introduced three DX10 budget solutions in the price range of Rs. 4,500 to Rs. 10,500. These 3 products namely the 8500 GT, 8600 GT and 8600 GTS are all based on the G80 core, are DX10 compatible and promise a better price/performance ratio than the previous generation 7xxx series cards.

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The card that we are reviewing here today is the XFX Nvidia 8500 GT 256 Mb card. This is the cheapest DX10 card available right now. We decided to put it to the test and see how it fares in a current DX9 game… Read on…

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XFX over the last year or so has developed a very good reputation for the easy availability of its products and good after-sales support. Though they normally tend to modify their products with improved HSF, better modules of graphic ram etc. the 8500 GT has been relatively left untouched and conforms mostly to the stock Nvidia design. The only addition has been an HSF to keep the card running cool.

Specification Table