AOE 3
Age of Empires III is not very sensitive to the activation of antialiasing (despite its expensive algorithm – but given its age, the game no longer throws any big challenges at current graphics cards), and again showed how close the 9600 GT is to the HD 3870, which was just a hair below it here. Sensitive to shading power but not to memory, this game – not really surprisingly – put the 8800 GT 256 MB in second position, in front of the 9600 GT, and the HD 3850 in last position in results that run counter to most of the other tests.
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Nice analysis as always but does anyone every proof read this stuff. On
Page 17 it seems clear that the TH UK guys were sent it by the American site and they forgot to check all the links, hence the [link to your 8800GT 256MB article here] comment. Also a mix up on the first page saying the 8800GTX had 786 not 768 ram.
It seems to get worse and worse!
Seems like a very good card. Fewer shading units, but faster memory than the 8800 GT. That 256-bit memory interface really shines, although I would not personally be willing to use any 9600 GT with less than 512MB, certainly not if they switched from GDDR3 to something inferior. I would buy this card and at this price I think it fills the mid-range gap very nicely. Thanks Tom.
Don't forget that the driver it's a new one...
I had msi 8600gt oc and i see big diferrent between 163.75 and 169.25 forceware driver so maybe the 9600gt come closer to 8800gt and with little overclocking maybe it can pass it!!
Ok so what happened to the next Generation should be faster and more powerful than the previous... Good rule I thought...
This is not good news for us recent EVGA buyers waiting for the new 8800 GTX/Ultra GPU killer...
Bob
Bob, it's classed as a mid-range card, but is able to compete with 8xxx series high-end cards. With more shader units it would be faster. Sure you can make it faster, but the cost soon jumps. Considering the kind of card it can out-class I think it's a very good card for the money.
Overclock the shaders. That should bring the performance up somewhat.
Still, why didn't they badge it as the 8650 or something? This generation-jumping that ATi started with the 3850/3870 gets incredibly confusing after a while. I'd hate to know how the poor saps in retail are coping with it, particularly with the average client/gamer IQ.
Yeh,
If they had just started the 9xxx series with the G92 8800GT and 8800GTS then everyones lives would be simplier!!
Bob