XFX over the last year or so has developed a very good reputation for the easy availability of its products and good after-sales support. Though they normally tend to modify their products with improved HSF, better modules of graphic ram etc. the 8500 GT has been relatively left untouched and conforms mostly to the stock Nvidia design. The only addition has been an HSF to keep the card running cool.
| GeForce 8500 GTS | GeForce 8600 GT | |
| DirectX version | 10.0 | 10.0 |
| Shader Model | 4.0 | 4.0 |
| Vertex shaders | - | - |
| Pixel shaders | - | - |
| Unified shaders | 16 | 32 |
| GPU clock frequency | 450 | 540 |
| Memory clock frequency | 800 MHz | 1400 MHz |
| Memory | 256/512 MB | 512 MB |
As you can see from the table, the 8500 has been fairly cut down to size as compared to its elder sibling the 8600 series. Not only are its core and shader clocks slower, the number of stream processors it offers is also vastly reduced and memory clock is nearly 60 percent slower. The biggest change is the fact that 8500GT utilizes DDR2 for its graphical RAM whereas the 8600 GT is based on the more widely used DDR3. However all is not lost. One key factor in the GeForce 8 series of cards has been the introduction of Nvidia’s own PureVideo HD technology. In its latest incarnation the PureVideo 2 is capable of utilizing the GPU entirely to decode HD Video streams encoded in next-generation codec’s such as VC-1 and H264. What this basically means, is that next generation formats such as Blu-Ray and HD DVD will run fine on older systems that might not have the processing power to handle these streams, as the entire decoding will be done via the GPU and not the CPU. This is a great boon for PC users who may want to utilize their PC as their main source of video entertainment. The importance of this feature will also increase as the prices of HD DVD/ Blu-Ray drives for the PC begin to fall and begin to achieve mass market status.
Physically the card is quite small offering a clean design, good darkish-brown PCB and a decent sized HSF. A good point to note here is that due to its reduced specifications, the card does not require an external power connector and works just fine without it.
How much does it cost now?Upto what level of games can be played properly with this? 
