i don't know if this was posted before , but who cares
We have obtained some information on performances of middle line and entry level GeForce 8: the GeForce 8600 GTS, 8600 GT and 8500 GT. These performances are restricted to 3DMark 06 and have to be put into perspective since the benchmark isn't always representative of performances in games.

With the same platform, if an 8800 GTX would obtain 11900 points, a GeForce 8600 GTS would obtain 7000 points or an identical score to the Radeon X1950 XTX. The GeForce 8600 GT with 5800 points would be slightly faster than the Radeon X1950 Pro and GeForce 7950 GT whereas the GeForce 8500 GT (2800 points) would be a little less performing than the Radeon X1650 Pro.

We noted that, for once, Nvidia has given a higher number to the entry level (based on G86). The card name is GeForce 8500 and not "GeForce 8200". Let's hope that this new approach isn't made to rename old products in GeForce 8xxx or have more entry level products and even less performing GeForce 8…

http://www.behardware.com/news/8684/...formances.html