THE TEST
The test of the Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition is done with the following additional hardware:

By default, the card runs at 540/1400MHz, and we managed to overclock the card to 590MHz on the core and 1480MHz on the memory. That’s a quite impressive achievement for a passively cooled graphics card, but we decided not to perform the test with these speeds since that is not the point with a passively cooled graphics card.

The following software was used during the test:

All tests have been executed with max detail and the mentioned AA and AF values. The first test is Futuremark’s 3DMark03 test. Here, there is a great distinction between ‘default’ and then 4x AA / 8x AF, where the score takes a dive of 40%.



In 3DMark05, the Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition shows a difference of 20% from ‘default’ and 4x AA / 8x AF.



In Futuremark’s 3DMark06 test, the latest in the series, it seems quite well in the ‘default’ test. In the test with 4x AA and 8x AF the score goes down by 50%, but that’s rather normal, and nothing that sets the Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition apart.



In the Counter Strike: Source, the Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition performs quite well, and the score goes down by 17-22 fps average, when the resolution is changed.



In F.E.A.R. with 2x AA and 8x AF, the Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition also performs quite well, and the score goes down by 9-18 fps when the resolution is changed, and there are no drastic drops in performance.



THE CONCLUSION
The Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition is an incredibly stabile mid-range graphics card with a lot of power stored beneath that relatively small passive cooler of its.

The Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition lies quite well in the Futuremark 3DMark tests, but also in games. The performance declines between the tested resolutions, and that is due to the fact that this is not a high-end graphics card, which would also be in a totally different price range as well.

In regard to overclocking, there are fine possibilities, but with a passively cooled graphics card, the main intention is a silent computer rather than a powerful system with higher amount of heat development.

A significant upside with the Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition is its small size with its passive cooling and the DVI audio. This combination makes this card an obvious choice for any HTPC where the GeForce 8600GT chip offers more than enough in performance as well as a fine H.264 / mpeg-4 encoder; something which can be a hindering for the smaller GeForce 8500 where the image can be blurry and choppy.

If anything of negative character ought to be mentioned it would be the lack of a software bundle, but that would of course also push up the price. Another thing is that the RAM modules are not cooled. The reason for this probably is that it would pressure the passive cooler further, and the lack of cooling doesn’t seem to give any trouble at all anyways.

We’ve given the Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition our Safe Buy Award, since this card is a really safe choice, and a perfect one for a barebone system or a HTPC.

The Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition can, by this writing, be purchased for slightly less than 1,400 Danish kroner at ClanShop.dk.