Zotac 8500GT Zone

When we reviewed the Zotac 8400GS we had second thoughts about the design of the package. This is not the case with the 8500GT Zone card. The prevalent fiery orange with the silver cyborg are very eye catching. The box has all of the contents and features nicely listed, so picking the card up at the store based on the box alone is not out of the question. The contents aren’t bad either, with the driver CD, the TV-Out dongle and a short manual. Most importantly however, Zotac included a DVI-to-HDMI adapter, a must for all HD enthusiasts.

The Zotac 8500GT Zone edition doesn’t stray from the reference cards in terms of GPU and memory speed. Both are the same as on a regular 8400GS card, meaning the GPU core running at 450MHz (900MHz for the shader stream processor) and the 256Mb of GDDR2 memory clocked at 400/800MHz. The key difference is the 128-bit memory bus, resulting in a 12.80GB/s memory bandwidth over the slower 6.40GB/s bandwidth of the 8400GS.

The cooler Zotac used for the 8500GT Zone looks like a shorter version of the one found on their 8400GS we reviewed previously, coupled with a heat-pipe design on the side. It doesn’t cool the memory modules, but seeing how the Hynix HY5PS561621A modules are running at their stock speeds, that shouldn’t be an issue.

Like the 8400GS we reviewed, the 8500GT has a VGA, a DVI and a TV-Out port. Most importantly, the DVI connector is capable of streaming audio as well, so when using the HDMI adapter the card can output a full HDMI signal.