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
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Performance
Version: 1.4
Settings: Everything maxed out without AA. Soft particles enabled
on DX10 class hardware.
For this benchmark, we created a new timedemo based on multiplayer action in the island level. Our old timedemo no longer works after the 1.4 update. This timedemo is about 10000 frames long and covers a lot of ground so many aspects of gameplay are incorporated. We run it with the timenetdemo and take the output. This is our only OpenGL benchmark.
The NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT out paces its competition in this benchmark. OpenGL has long been a strong suit for NVIDIA, but AMD has made some gains in this area with their current generation of cards. It isn't enough this time around to put AMD on top with the NVIDIA hardware clearly leading. Of course, it's also hard to miss the abysmal performance of the 8800 GT 256MB card here. Clearly in a situation where the memory size is not an issue it can shine (1280x1024), but performance drops to half or less that of the 9600 GT when pushed higher.
Either NVIDIA really needs to start optimizing for lower memory situations, or it should just not make parts like this. Hopefully we won't see 256MB 9600 GT parts with similar characteristics.
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ChronoReverse - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
The 7950's can't beat the x1950's much less the 7900 series. The gap has only widen as more modern games came out.Aberforth - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Crysis benchmark @ medium settings? gimme a break, Obviously this review is designed to show 9600GT in good light.rcc - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
As I read it, it's designed to show how it compares to similar cards. Sure they could provide test in in Crysis at full settings, but it's a bit like providing grand prix lap times on a Tercel.Staples - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Either that or this was done very sloppy. The 8800GT 256 is mysteriously missing in all the benchmark which do not require a lot of video memory. In these tests, the 8800GT 256MB would win. I smell a rat.Kurotetsu - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
"The benchmarks don't prop up the card I bought so it must be bogus!"If the 3850 was leading in that test, you wouldn't be complaining at all.
Griswold - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
(_,_)pmonti80 - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
It's just a review made at the kind of settings most of the cards analized will be used. How useful can be a review were the cards are around 15 fps?ncage - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
For those who want a more lengthy writeup with more games tested and a bigger selection of video cards then check out the review at tomshardware. I wanted a comparison between the 8800GT 512MB & the 9600GT which is available at toms. I will tell you they are pretty close in benchmark numbers but the 8800GT still wins in every case which im quite happy about since i just bought a 8800GT :). We will see how good value the 9600GT is after the etailers do their price gouging. Still Nvidia is doing a VERY good job in bring competition to the market.knitecrow - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
bah... i am not going back to tom for anythingmurphyslabrat - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
I am sure this is on everyone's mind: overclock the thing already!