MSI unveiled its latest graphics card, NX8600GT Twin Turbo, which adds a little twist to what would have been just another GeForce 8600GT Graphics card.
The new addition is a simple button which would switch the graphics card to "Turbo Mode" immediately when pressed.
Comparing to last generation of NVIDIA GeForce GPU, the GeForce 8 family use unified shader processing unit, aka Stream Processors, to simultaneously handle 3D modeling/pixel rendering in a more flexible way. These Stream Processors execute instructions and mapping textures at about 2.x times of default GPU core clock. If the ratio of Stream Processor clock (aka Shader Clock) over GPU core clock is raised, the performance of graphics card can be boosted right the way without generating too much heat.
In order to enjoy benefits of this unique tweaking skill, vBIOS on the graphic card must be re-flashed on the PC platform today. Users will violate the warranty agreement and could highly possible damage their graphic card product if they were not familiar how to re-flash vBIOS.
For the hard-core gamer, MSI launched the NX8600GT Twin Turbo which has two separate vBIOS on-board carrying two dedicated GPU/Shader/Memory clock settings. Users only have to press a hardware button on the bracket, and then the new (higher) clock setting can be applied without re-flashing the vBIOS chip. Also, these two vBIOS chips give extreme enthusiast a Die-Hard workability (another vBIOS chip as spare) if they want to tweak the vBIOS to find out the ultimate performance parameters between Shader clock and GPU core clock.
With the stock speed profile, the NX8600GT Twin Turbo operates at 540 MHz core, 1400 MHz memory and 1450 MHz shader clock. Pressing the turbo button raises the clock speeds up to 580 MHz core, 1600 MHz memoryand 1508 MHz shader clock. MSI claims that switching to turbo mode yields a 20 percent performance boost in 3DMark06.