Bringing Competition to Midrange: The GeForce 9600 GT Raises NVIDIA's Sub $200 Bar
by Derek Wilson on February 21, 2008 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Crysis Performance
Version: 1.1
Settings: All medium quality settings.
Crysis is the go to game for performance hungry graphics testing today. With beautiful graphics around every corner, even on lower quality settings, this is definitely a game we need to consider when looking at hardware. Unfortunately, the class of card exemplified by the GeForce 9600 GT (in spite of the fact that it offers a nice performance for the money) is unable to handle more than medium quality settings at 1600x1200 without performance hiccups.
For this test, we recorded our own demo using the record and demo console commands. Each test was run three times, and we took the highest score of the three (usually the second and third runs were the same or very nearly so). Our recorded demo consisted of a 20 second run through the woods in the level "rescue" and we verified the performance of our timedemo using FRAPS. The run was near the beginning of the level and we stayed clear of enemies in order to reduce the impact of AI on our graphics benchmark.
For the GeForce 9600 GT and the Radeon HD 3850, performed within 0.5 fps of each other. This is less than our standard 3% margin of error under nominal conditions. The fact that we saw performance this similar between our timedemo and FRAPS is a good indication that the Crysis demo playback feature is fairly indicative of graphics hardware performance in this particular situation. Keep in mind that our numbers will be higher than what readers see in gameplay situations, as physics, AI, and other overhead will come into play.
The GeForce 9600 GT comes out swinging with performance between AMD's Radeon HD 3850 and 3870. In addition, it leads the performance of the $200 version of the 8800 GT (the 256MB version). SLI and CrossFire scaling looks to taper off at lower resolutions, so it is likely that we could enable some higher detail settings in those cases without incurring a huge performance hit.
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dm0r - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Ca we say the best midrange nvidia card ever?Good review.Ill keep tunned for more testing.I also would like to see the 256MB variant.Thanks
kmmatney - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
No, I don't think you can say best mid-range card ever. The past year has been so bad, it just makes this look like a good deal. This is what the mid-rnage should have always been like. Some better mid-range cards in the pastBetter mid-range cards that I've owned in the past
Voodoo3 1000 - $45 card, performed better than $100 cards at the time
Ti4200 - $120, very overclockable
Radeon LE - $65 - bios update to perform like a $165 card
6600GT - defacto mid-range card for a long time
Radeon X800GTO2 - Bios update to 16 pipes, X850XT PE speeds
There are others, these are just very good mid-range cards that I've owned, that I would say offered the same or better bang-for-buck as the 9600GT.
BigLan - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
The 6600 was a great card for it's time, and further back than that the 4200ti was incredible - though you could argue that it wasn't technically mid-range.dm0r - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
oh, forgot to mention the temperature testsknitecrow - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
It is a good preview but I would like to see more in depth benchmarking, esp. with titles like Gears Of War, and BioshockSpivonious - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Is the 3850 included in the benchmarks at 256MB or 512MB?hadifa - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Tomshardware has done some tests with the 512MB versionImSpartacus - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
I don't know why anyone bothers with the 256mb version anymore. The 512mb is cheap as dirt and does wonders on those higher resolutions.I was planning on getting one, but this 9600gt is looking a little better.
Spivonious - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Nevermind, I read the whole last page now :)