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
Final Words
Thankfully, those who spend less than $200 on their new graphics hardware will finally have a reason to upgrade. AMD's introduction of the Radeon HD 3850 handled that nicely on their end a few months back, and NVIDIA has now followed suit with a part that brings competition back to another market segment. Something we haven't had a good amount of for a very long time now and we are certainly thankful for its return.
We have heard murmurs that AMD will be lowering prices on their HD 3000 series, but we don't have any firm details as of yet. If this is the case, then we may see stronger competition at the lower end of the spectrum when looking at the high end Radeon HD 3850 parts. We will be doing a follow up next week looking at the 512MB versions of the 3850 and the GeForce 8800 GT in order to answer some questions we have following these tests.
From what we have seen, price, clock speed, memory size, and features are going to be the selling points here rather than which company designed the GPU. Of course, if AMD does drop its price, they could very likely have a winner on their hand. Especially if we find out that the 512MB part helps to smooth over some of the rough spots we've seen with the 3850 so far. Before we can wrap this up with a neat little bow, we simply have to answer a couple more questions and wait and see what happens with price.
Rather than seeing the fact that we need more info as a bad thing, we are very grateful that we have this problem: the competition is hot enough to push both NVIDIA and AMD to do all they can to provide the best value for the consumer. And the real winner in that situation is everyone in the market for a graphics card under $200.
Update: AMD has cut prices on its Radeon HD 3800 series, to see how this changes things take a look at our price-performance comparison here.
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Spacecomber - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Thanks for the review and helping us to keep up with the latest in video card releases. I'm glad to hear that you'll be going back to include the 8800GT 512MB and the 3850 512MB. It's a crowded field with all of these cards that have come out in the last few months, but I think it is important to try and keep an eye on all of them when making these comparisons.It may not be practical at this time, since the 9600GT isn't available for sale, yet, but it would be nice to see a bang for your buck kind of chart for these new cards. I know that anandtech has done something like this in the past. The arbitrary part will be deciding what benchmarks (games and resolutions) to use for this. Still, I would find this interesting to see.
Any ideas as to what resolutions (i.e., size monitors) that people looking for the $150-$250 card likely might be using?
Verdant - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
use a midrange lunch right about now, ...mmm Subwayfic2 - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
"major complaint we had of previous midrange lunches."Do you get fries with those lunches?
Sunrise089 - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
You guys really needed to test a 8800GT 512 or 8800GTS 512. I understand this is a midrange part, but when it tops the benchmark charts in some games, it's absolutely essential to know what card is actually faster. Looking at the Enemy Territory test for example, one could conclude that this could be the single fastest GPU available.PS - For those talking about the "best midrange GPU ever" - forget about it. This card certainly trumps the last-gen midrange, so it's much better than the 8600s, and on par with the 7600s. The 6600s though actually topped the last-gen high-end. 6600gt over 9800pro is IMHO the example of the ultimate midrange card.
andrew007 - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
It is ABSOLUTELY essential to add 8800GT numbers. Without those numbers I just have no idea how well (or not well) this card performs. It doesn't make sense to not include a card that sells at a similar price and is probably the most popular right now and is currently used as a yardstick.nubie - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Natch, the 7900GS is quite simply the ultimate mid-range (although I do have a couple 6600GT, and they are really good). I suppose the argument could be made that they are really entry-level High-End, but the prices are mid-range.For $95 on ebay and dropping, the 7900GS isn't hard to recommend. With Ramsinks and an aftermarket cooler it can easily hit 650mhz stable on the core with a slight voltmod (some voltmodded Zalman'ed ones are $100)
Sunrise089 - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
7900GS isn't a bad choice either, but it looses out on 4 counts:1) It cost more - as you said, it's entry level high-end by total numbers sold, even if it isn't by percentage of maximum possible GPU cost.
2) You had to work your way further up the line to clearly beat the last gen - it's most impressive to beat the last top-end card with a card more stages removed from the top part (6800ultra-6800gt-6800-6600gt is more than 7900gtx-7900gt-7900gs)
3) Perception wise, it has the "high end" naming scheme where the second diget of the name is 8 or 9.
4) Most importantly it came out much later. This is the essential qualifier of a great card IMHO. The 6600gt beat the 9800pro within a month of the first 6000 series availability. The 7900gs was a later-released part where nvidia had more time to work on economics-of-scale to keep the price down.
ChronoReverse - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Not to mention the x1950Pro beat the snot out of it.nubie - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
1) Sorry, 8600GT was always more expensive than 7900GS. (no facts of course, I am probably not 100% true)2) 7950GX2-7900GTX-7950GT-7900GT-7900GS If you want to be technically accurate.
3) Pffftthth, as I say, they were available for $130-150, the 8600GT wasn't (isn't??)
4) Ah, but I really don't care about ATI.
So in summation, I agree with you, but it is a very close call, facts remain that the 8600GT was only a good buy if you needed the "True Purevideo HD" Full hardware decode, and performance around that of a card $50 cheaper.
nubie - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Oops, I almost forgot, the 7900GS is an x1950XTX killer, for about the same price the 7900GS could be overclocked easily to 650mhz and eat one for lunch (as mine has been doing for 2 years now :D), so your 6600GT/9800 analogy is applicable to my 7900GS one.