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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
49 Comments
View All Comments
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!