Question About 8500 and 8600

[Zeroextreme]

as I mentioned in another thread. I recently bought an Nvidia Geforce 8500 512mb card, mostly because of what it had over the 8600 being the hd support. But I never understood why the 8600 256mb cost more. Can somebody please explain to me what's the difference between the two cards?
(please don't get too technical in termonology, I'm both a n00b and a simpleton ;) )

And if one was so inclined, could one have both cards installed in ones pc? (seeing as though I still have 2 other pci slots free).

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

As far as I know there is no hybrid SLI yet...so no you can't have them joined (joining different cards is reserved for ATI Crossfire)...or at least those components don't qualify...

With the current naming scheme the 1000 number is the generation number. So these are 8 series GeForce cards. The other numbers then determine the performance...and an 600 is obviously better than 500. The memory only really makes a difference between generations and between cards of the same name.
Therefore the 8600 is still more than the 8500.

Also note that these graphics cards run through PCI Express....not regular PCI...these days cards don't really exist anymore which use that slot and those that do are incredibly weak (AGP is also pretty much extinct)...it's mainly still sound cards or TV cards or modems/wireless cards that use regular PCI. So 2 join them you would need an SLI capable motherboard with 2 or more PCI Express slots...and in this case support for Hybrid SLI aswell (joining 2 cards which are not identical)...which is very very rare at this stage.

[StriderVM]

Well, let's just say the 8600GT can be as much as 50% faster even though that 8500GT has 512MB of RAM. It's like this, having a high number of video RAM on a slow video card is like having a truck with an engine of an SUV. Sure, it looks huge due to the RAM, but with the slow video card performance itself, the video RAM will most likely be wasted. As such, it's primarily a marketing gimmick, for the people that thinks that more vram means more performance.

[S.SubZero]

Video Card Comparison - GPUReview.com (http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=514&card2=513)

That's why.

[Zeroextreme]

ok, following s.subzero's post the 8600 seems to have overall better graphics rendering...but what I still wonder is, why is that my card have better hd quality? and why market it in direct comparison? To me, there doesn't seem to be a clear choice in what to buy, unless you're willing to buy Monsterous cards like the 8800 or above.

[StriderVM]

Really? Hmm, I don't remember the two video cards having different HD output capabilities. They should be the same.