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
Crysis Performance
Version: 1.1
Settings: All medium quality settings.
Crysis is the go to game for performance hungry graphics testing today. With beautiful graphics around every corner, even on lower quality settings, this is definitely a game we need to consider when looking at hardware. Unfortunately, the class of card exemplified by the GeForce 9600 GT (in spite of the fact that it offers a nice performance for the money) is unable to handle more than medium quality settings at 1600x1200 without performance hiccups.
For this test, we recorded our own demo using the record and demo console commands. Each test was run three times, and we took the highest score of the three (usually the second and third runs were the same or very nearly so). Our recorded demo consisted of a 20 second run through the woods in the level "rescue" and we verified the performance of our timedemo using FRAPS. The run was near the beginning of the level and we stayed clear of enemies in order to reduce the impact of AI on our graphics benchmark.
For the GeForce 9600 GT and the Radeon HD 3850, performed within 0.5 fps of each other. This is less than our standard 3% margin of error under nominal conditions. The fact that we saw performance this similar between our timedemo and FRAPS is a good indication that the Crysis demo playback feature is fairly indicative of graphics hardware performance in this particular situation. Keep in mind that our numbers will be higher than what readers see in gameplay situations, as physics, AI, and other overhead will come into play.
The GeForce 9600 GT comes out swinging with performance between AMD's Radeon HD 3850 and 3870. In addition, it leads the performance of the $200 version of the 8800 GT (the 256MB version). SLI and CrossFire scaling looks to taper off at lower resolutions, so it is likely that we could enable some higher detail settings in those cases without incurring a huge performance hit.
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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!