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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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 :)