VVikoo graphics cards on Review!

[gilgamesh]

The Ultimate Shoot-out
Two Graphics Cards Reviewed.


It is not often in the PC Industry that we have a ‘newcomer’ in the Computer industry these days, with everyday names such, NVIDIA, ATI, AMD and INTEL dominating the scene. Today is one of those rare cases where we do have such a new entry into the market and what an entry they have made!

Vviko Graphics cards.

Who are Vvikoo and WHY haven’t we heard of them?

[
CENTER]Vvikoo may be new company just started this last year, however they do have a strong team behind them. Coming from illustrious backgrounds such as Universal Abit (although they are by no means connected in anyway) Vvikoo graphics cards have some ‘heavy fighters’ in their midst and indeed they have come out of the corner swinging!

Today Vvikoo has knocked us all sideways with their first sally with not one, but Two new graphics cards releases, based on the NVidia chipsets.[/CENTER]

The video cards on review today all have 256MB of RAM installed and are as follows:

NVIDIA
8600GTS
8600 GT TURBO

Equipment used to test.
Abit IP35 PRO rev 1.0 mainboard
4X1 gigabyte modules (4 gigs) of Crucial Ballistix DDR2 1066
Intel QUADCORE Q 6600 CPU (B3 Stepping)
Corsair HX620 PSU
Mountain Mods U2 UFO case
CPU ONLY water cooled using a Thermochill PA 120.3 Radiator

Introducing the VVikoo 8600GTS


There have been many incarnations of this mid-range graphics card, from XFX, Gigabyte and others however I have never seen a box that was as uninspiring as this one. The box is a rather bland grey/silver colour with few diagrams and images on the box to show what you are getting for your hard-earned money. However the box does have a very nice professional look and feel to it, which helps to detract from its uninspiring look.

BOX shots



The bundle included with this card is also uninspiring, including only a VGA splitter, DVI dongle and an installation disk! Hey but if you think about it when they say a free game is included, we all know that it is not actually free, you just pay more for the graphics card initially. Whilst we are on the subject usually these so-called free games are mostly one-year old plus games that do not utilise the full power of the card. So looking at this on a fairly it could be said that Vvikoo has accredited the purchaser of their cards with some intelligence and the price of this card reflects such thinking.

MY first impressions of the card were that this is a very plain card. One word leapt out to me upon first inspection and this word was the word ‘generic’. However upon closer inspection we can see a rather large copper Zalman Heatsink/fan sat upon the GPU Core. This card also sports rather generic looking RAM sinks that tells me it is possible that these could be the downfall of the card. However let us see the test results for our selves!

Card Shots








Software Testing


Benchmarking Software used, 3DMARK06, FRAPS, X3 Reunion, Oblivion and BioShock! It were also my intention to include Far Cry 2 and Clive Barkers Jericho benchmark results, however time constraints stopped this from happening.

Software Drivers used on all Nvidia tests were 163.44

BIOSHOCK 1024x768 results




1280X1024 Screenshots



The card handled Bioshock with ease on 1024x768 resolution. In 1280x1024 the lowest framerate of 22 FPS was recorded under Windows XP with all the games details set to maximum!.

VISTA Bioshock

However in a few sections of the game and DirectX 10 enabled, the game takes a few hits on the FPS as the screenshots clearly demonstrate.

VISTA Bioshock


1024x768


Since I am limited to 20 images per post I will have to continue this review in part 2

[gilgamesh]

pART 2 OF THIS Review





However in a few sections of the game and DirectX 10 enabled, the game takes a few hits on the FPS as the screenshots clearly demonstrate.

Oblivion


Oblivion is a game that though it is ‘a little long in the tooth’ it still can clearly bring even high specification cards to its knees! The 8600GTS all game details set on maximum and HDR enabled it still manages to pull of some very nice frame rates even set on the highest the test monitor would allow.

1024x768



1280x1024



X3 Reunion


All test results in the game were easily in double figures on both resolutions

1024x768 screenshots



1280x1024 shots



3DMARK 06

We all know what 3DMARK06 and to be honest these are only synthetic tests and do not apply in ‘real life’ gaming however I have included the results here.

Results before Overclocking



Results After Overclocking



As we can see from the screenshots the VVikoo 8600GTS eats through all my tests, with room to spare in most cases.

Temperature Results


On Idle



As we can see the card even on full load runs very cool, however what is even better is that the fan on the card is very quiet. A win-win situation in anyone’s book

Overclocking


As far as the GPU core is concerned I managed a very nice respectable overclock of
817MHZ and the memory speed of 1116mhz. Overclocking further only produced artefacts on the screen. It is my opinion that the overclocking potential of this card and indeed all of the cards reviewed here, that the memory heatsinks need to be very much upgraded to handle higher overclocks.

8600 GTS Pros/Cons


PROS
Overclocks VERY WELL
Cheaper Street Price
Handles games Well
Quiet Fan

Cons

Generic looking card
Generic heatsinks
No extras (could be a good thing)



Conclusion

I ask the reader of this review a question? Are you of the same thinking as I? Do you also think Fatal1ty products offer no extra performance and yet cost more to boot? If you are than these cards are right up your street, these cards are FASTER than their fatal1ty counterparts and run cooler to boot (on the whole).

The 8600 GTS from VVikoo is a great first entrance for them and is one of the easiest cards I have ever Overclocked.

Final Score of 91%

[Pob255]

Ok were to begin

a repete of what I said before:

It is not often in the PC Industry that we have a ‘newcomer’ in the Computer industry these days, with everyday names such, NVIDIA, ATI, AMD and INTEL dominating the scene. Today is one of those rare cases where we do have such a new entry into the market and what an entry they have made!

+

The video cards on review today all have 256MB of RAM installed and are as follows:
NVIDIA
8600GTS
8600 GT TURBO

= Crud

This is just 2nd tier manufactoring (or even 3rd tier (rebranding)) it's a new name, but that's not exactly new. When a new company comes in to produce actual chipsets then it might live up to the hyperbol of that.

Ok I can execpt that it's colour, but that is the sort of thing that stops me paying much serious attention to a review.


Next I'll skip right down to your conclusions

8600 GTS Pros/Cons
PROS
Overclocks VERY WELL
I'm not surprised, with what looks like a Zalman cooler on it.
Cheaper Street Price
Umm compaired to? no where is a price listed or did you compair it to other brand 8600gts and I did a quick search and cannot find any for sale, so this is statement is Null and Void
Handles games Well
at what is seen s low res by many, ok I'll come clean here I don't personally consider 1280x1024 as low res.
Quiet Fan
again compaired to? I'm guessing an Nvidia stock cooler but you've not mentioned this anyware.

Cons
Generic looking card
Generic heatsinks
No extras (could be a good thing)
Looks fine to me

Conclusion
I ask the reader of this review a question? Are you of the same thinking as I? Do you also think Fatal1ty products offer no extra performance and yet cost more to boot? If you are than these cards are right up your street, these cards are FASTER than their fatal1ty counterparts and run cooler to boot (on the whole).
I agree with you here, but again without knowing a price or a direct comparrasion how should we know if this isn't overpriced? could be that it's overpriced compaired to thoes of the other "lesser" brands eg xpertvision or Palit
The 8600 GTS from VVikoo is a great first entrance for them and is one of the easiest cards I have ever Overclocked.
umm how much did you overclock this card by? you didn't tell us it's stock speeds.
Final Score of 91%

All of which bring me back up to the top and one glareing thing

The Ultimate Shoot-out

To be a shoot-out, let alone an ultimate one, you need at least two cards "shooting it out" against each other.
Compairing two differnt card by the same manufactor/brand is hardly a shoot out. (assumeing you're going to add a 8600gt review)

Sorry Gilgamesh if I sound a bit harsh, do appreacheate the review, it's just not that great and doesn't tell us much if anything we don't already know.

Cupple of things I find intresting are:
Is that a real zalman? or a copy? if real then why the none to great heatsinks?
Intresting to see the speeds the 8600GTS chip can get up too with a good heat sink.

[gilgamesh]

M8

I have no where near finished the review as of yet, I have a 8600 GT turbo to add to this review.
However it takes time to post iwth all the links, and with Hexus limiting images to 20 per post, I couldnt get as many images as I wanted on. This is not very good for hexus!

As forthe cards I only have an XFX 8800GTS as my primary card, so I can hardly compare the two?

The Zalman cooler is an actual Zalman and not a copy. If you had read the review closely, I had mentioned before about the generic RAM Sinks, I have investigated this and VVikoo are not happy with those RAM sinks either and are in the process of purchasing better Ram Sinks from Zalman.


gilgamesh
For a companies first card release its a good card.

gilgamesh

[kalniel]

Yeah, I'm not quite getting the 'ultimate' thing :/

[Lucio]

However the question remains, where do you get one from??

I can see the appeal in a company that prefits after market coolers and given the high temps on the new 8800GT along with a relatively noisy stock cooler, I'd be looking out to see if they release a model

[MadduckUK]

i cant tell if this is a review or an advert. it smells like an advert though, and the questions that are asked don't seem to be genuine questions but rhetoric's that that the advert wants the reader to think...

card isn't compared to anything else, so i see absolutely no point in using BENCHMARKING software. Without an actual benchmark card ITS JUST NUMBERS

[schmunk]

It looks a lot like an advert to me...

[kalniel]

and with Hexus limiting images to 20 per post, I couldnt get as many images as I wanted on. This is not very good for hexus!

Actually why are you showing so many screenshots? Surely you only need one or two (per chip type)to be able to test that the card is rendering the image correctly - I think there's even a function in 3dmark06 for this as well.

[MadduckUK]

yep, too may screen shots and there all 320x240 which is way too small to read most of the stuff your showing us.

you say that

As we can see from the screenshots the VVikoo 8600GTS eats through all my tests, with room to spare in most cases.

what the hell does this mean? how can a graphics card complete a 3dmark test "with room to spare"? absolute tosh

[Aez]

This has to be a blatant advert, if its geniuenly a review its an aweful one.

[Pob255]

The Zalman cooler is an actual Zalman and not a copy. If you had read the review closely, I had mentioned before about the generic RAM Sinks, I have investigated this and VVikoo are not happy with those RAM sinks either and are in the process of purchasing better Ram Sinks from Zalman.

Yes I did read it, you say on closer inspection it's a zalman cooler and show a close up image, of the heat sink which looks identical to a Zalman but has a sticker on the fan with VVikoo's web adress on it, That does not prover that it's a Zalman, the fact that some rather bad looking ram heat sinks have been used makes me wonder if it's a Zalman or a cheaper copy.

You don't need 3 pictures of everygame at every resolution, we all know what it's going to look like.
The only reason for multiple picutres is to contrast differnt settings and/or cards.

And What I said about comparative conclusions still holds true, you cannot draw comparative conclusions without actually compairing it to anything.
You only have an 8800gts? fine compaire it to that, yes it'll be slower but will that speed differnce vs cost make this card worth it?

Others have said this reads more like an advert than a review, I'm trying to say why.

[Blackmage]

if it's an advert not a very good one