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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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 :)