Duel: GeForce 9600 GT VS HD 3870
To give you a more precise idea of how the GeForce 9600 GT compared to one of its direct rivals, the Radeon HD 3870, we brought all the performance scores of those two cards together, then calculated the spread.
As can be seen clearly, STALKER and Age of Empires III are the exceptions, the only games for which the GeForce 9600 GT manages to edge ahead of the HD 3870. In all the other cases, the HD 3870 is fairly clearly ahead of its rival, with spreads of 13-15% with Call of Duty 4 and World In Conflict, and smaller ones with Unreal Tournament 3 and Supreme Commander.
The situation is reversed once the filters are enabled, even though the spreads aren’t as wide. In four games, the HD 3870 kept the advantage or is only slightly behind the 9600 GT. Two games give the card an especially strong advantage in filter mode, with difference of more than 20% – Oblivion and Supreme Commander.
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