InnoVision company (in graphic card industry know with its brand name Inno3D) is know as producer of solid and cheap graphic cards. Its lineup presents all models from current NVIDIA GeForce family, from 8400GS to 8800Ultra. In this review we look at its basic model Inno3D GeForce 8500GT with 256 MB of DDR2 memory.
Into the Box
Due to cheap price are accessories, which you can find in the box, limited only at HDTV cable, short user manual and driver CD. We can’t consider this as fault, because this is a Value-priced card.
Into the Core
NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT is based on G86 core, which is cheaper sister of G84 (GeForce 8600GT and GTS). If we look close at difference between this two cores, we find here only 16 Stream processors. GeForce 8600GT and GTS are equipped with 32 Stream processors, GeForce 8800GTS have 96 and GeForce 8800 GTX and Ultra have 128 Stream processors. Decreasing number of Stream processors has big impact not only on weak performance, but also on great overclocking capability. With only 16 Stream processors can GeForce 8500GT reach higher Core clock frequencies that its big sisters GeForce 8600GT and GTS.
Go to the Clocks!
We start overclocking with some fear about its life, but what we find is little amazing. We increase core frequencies from 480 MHz to 729 MHz, what is 52% raise. Memory overclocking capabilities was little worst; we increase it from 800 MHz to 932 MHz. Burn test with 3 hours of 3DMark06 loop succeed without any problems and overall performance in games goes over 30%, what is incredible for low-end card.
Final result
With default core and memory clock frequencies is Inno3D GeForce 8500GT good choice for personal multimedia center or for occasional gamers. Its VP2 processor for HD Video decoding process is good solution for incoming Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies. DirectX10 support is here only for a nice looks, performance in DirectX 10 versions of Lost Planet and Call of Juarez games was terrible. After successful overclocking we have here interesting model with sufficient power for many games at full details.
Rating: Very good Product – 4/5 points
Inno3D GeForce 8500GT
Technical specification: Core: NVIDIA G86 * Slot: PCI Express * Memory amount: 256 MB * Memory type: DDR2 * Clock frequencies for core / memory: 480 MHz / 800 MHz * Cooling: Active * External power: No * Out: 1×DVI, 1×D-SUB, 1×HDTV * Accesories: HDTV cable, manual, drivers CD.
Test platform:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
MB: ASUS P5B DeLuxe
RAM: ADATA 2x 1024 MB 1066 MHz
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