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
World in Conflict Performance
Version: 1.005
Settings: Medium quality plus Heat Haze, Debris Physics, and
DX10 (where available)
This game, like Crysis, is a resource hog, and only incredibly powerful systems can run this game with all the settings cranked all the way up. The sub $200 market is not going to tackle this game with high settings, but in our play tests medium seemed a little too low on the detail (or left more performance head room, which ever perspective you prefer). We added a few features to the list set by the medium quality defaults and enabled DX10 for cards that supported it. It is important to note that the X1950 XTX doesn't run with DX10 here so its performance is more of a reference for previous generation cards.
We tested this game using the built in benchmark feature of the game. In our experience this does a good job of testing the different graphical scenarios that can be encountered in the game.
The 3850 would not make it through a benchmark run above 1280x1024. We would always get a hard lock and need to power down the system in order to deal with it. This also happened a couple times with the 8800 GT, but not at all with the 3850s in CrossFire.
The 9600 GT more than doubles the performance of the 8600 GT here, and also leads the 256MB 8800 GT. No matter how it's sliced, the GeForce 9600 GT is the best thing we tested at this price point under World in Conflict. The Radeon HD 3870 does match performance (and pulls ahead at high resolution), and (in addition to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) we would like to follow up and see how the 512mb versions of the 8800 GT and the 3850 perform.
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pmonti80 - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
That's probably becuase it's a transicional product, in one or two months you won't be able to buy one.poohbear - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
nice review, but i expected to see more cards compared with the 9600gt from a site like anandtech, especially the 8800gt 512mb version which everybody's been buying. are you guys on a budget or something?anachreon - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Somehow this review feels a little sloppier than the past AnandTech video card reviews I have come to trust. The cards represented in various tests are inconsistent, and the lack of a 512mb 8800 GT, as well as AA and AF, in the tests is baffling.DerekWilson - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I don't understand what you mean about the cards represented being inconsistent. We tested the exact same six cards in every tests and the same 2 multiGPU configurations as well ... the only graph that lacks anything is the WiC 16x12 graph because we could not get the 3850 to complete the benchmark at that resolution.The 512 MB 8800 GT isn't really in competition with these cards in terms of price. Since AMD dropped the price so dramatically, it's more of a direct comparison, and if we had known before hand we would have included something else from the next price point up (like the 512MB 8800 GT).
We can't test everything for every review, and we've got to make trade offs. Sometimes we make the wrong call, and not including the 512MB 8800 GT was one of those time. We'll certainly include it in follow up testing.
Thanks,
Derek Wilson
pmonti80 - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Dereck I think what he means is that at 1st sight the results are little bit strange. I had to check several reviews to see that the results are the same (how could i ever doubt you? ;)).An example of strange results at 1st sight is the 256MB 8800GT. Also the fact that filters give an advantage to the 9600 GT and the test without filters give an advantage to the 3870.
GTaudiophile - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
So if I have a eVGA GeForce 7900GT, which would be the better upgrade? A 8800 GT with 512MB RAM or a 9600GT? Can you get a 9600GT with 512MB RAM?xsilver - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
7900gt to 9600gt wouldnt be a colossal upgrade. It would probably be better to get the 8800gt or 8800gts otherwise stick it out with what you've got until the next 9xxx part rolls around.LoneWolf15 - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
No AA/AF makes these benchmarks nearly useless. Also, while Oblivion is a great game, it is now a dated game, and no longer a good standard to measure cards by.I'm sorry, but I couldn't base a buying decision off of this review.
semo - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
wouldn't it be better to put in 2 higher clocked dual core processors. aren't 4 cores more than enough for games today?peldor - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
What's up with no AA tests at all and in some cases no AF? Seems like half a review without those.