When looking over the various GeForce 8600 GTS cards on the market, there’s a lot to sort through. Do you want a factory overclocked card, or would you rather save a little money by getting a stock GTS card and overclocking the card yourself? Is cooling performance important to you, or is the stock NVIDIA heatsink/fan unit good enough? Besides price, these are the kinds of questions you’re going to have to ask and determine for yourself when shopping for cards.
If price is no object though, and you’re willing to go all-out, BFG’s GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 with ThermoIntelligence clearly stands out. The card delivered some of the best 3D performance in our benchmarks, while at the same time running with very low thermals despite its high clock speeds. What’s most remarkable about all this is that BFG is able to pull all this off in a single-slot package. This is a tribute to the R&D BFG has put into their ThermoIntelligence cooler. It’s because all of this that we’re awarding the BFG GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 with our Editor’s Choice Award.