When the Smoke Clears & Prices Settle: GeForce 9600 GT vs. Radeon HD 3870
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 22, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT vs. ATI Radeon HD 3870
Across 9 games and 12 benchmarks the Radeon HD 3870 and the GeForce 9600 GT trade blows. If you want specifics, the 3870 wins 7 benchmarks while the 9600 GT wins 5. However, whenever the 9600 GT manages a win it is usually by a larger margin - an average of 24% across our benchmarks compared to a 9.9% average margin of victory for the Radeon HD 3870.
The 9600 GT's average margin of victory in the games it does well in is so great mainly because of two titles: Quake Wars and Call of Duty 4. The strange thing is that we've seen ATI GPUs do better in both games, only to see performance go down in the last driver update. Quake Wars also recently got updated to the 1.5 patch so it's possible that the new patch also slowed things down for the Radeon HD 3870, but we suspect that both of these performance outliers are driver related and can be remedied. If ATI could achieve performance parity in these two titles that would reduce the 9600 GT's average margin of victory to 8.9%, very close to the 3870's current advantage in the benchmarks it does win.
However we must recommend based on presently available data, and right now it looks like the GeForce 9600 GT is the better buy. It's cheaper than the Radeon HD 3870 and offers a better overall performance case thanks to its larger margin of victory when it comes ahead in a game.
If you look at the cheapest available Radeon HD 3870 ($184.99 from Newegg) then the 9600 GT price advantage all but disappears, and if you don't play Quake Wars or CoD4 then the 3870 ends up being just as good of an option as the 9600 GT.
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kilkennycat - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
Cashflow is not at all helpful if profits are negligible. That's a lot like being on a treadmill; lots of movement but getting nowhere.AMD's creditors are looking for neet profits to pay off their loans. From any production gross profits, AMD has first to recover the silicon DEVELOPMENT charges - probably at least $10million per silicon turn including chip test SETUP costs. And that is assuming that the silicon turn is just a minor variant on a current architecture - say fewer data-paths.
Since the AMD partners had to chop the RRP of the 3850/3870 by $50 -$70 then AMD probably had to absorb at least $40 average in a reduction of the price they charge their partners for the GPUs. I doubt if that leaves them any money at all above the GPU production costs to pay off their development overhead. Maybe Anand and crew can do a breakdown of the costs on a typical 3850/3870 board? I think that you will find that for the board partners to make any profit at all at the current retail prices, AMD cannot now be charging more than $50 - $60 per GPU. I suspect that packaging and final test for a GPU is in the $20 -$30 range, which leaves precious little money to pay for each yielded die, the necessary probe-test and all other handling overhead, and help pay off the interest and capital on their loans --let alone pay off the development expenditures. nVidia can afford thin margins for a long period of time; AMD in their current financial condition sure cannot.
Anyway, nVidia's next-gen GPUs are well into design, no doubt will make their appearance well before the end of this year, and until then I fully expect them to keep up the price pressure on AMD. And no doubt Intel will do the same once the full range of Penryn processors is available.
Zoomer - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
Don't forget that the higher end 3870 is using the same part, so economics of scale will play a part in reducing costs too.ATi hardware engineers rock.
razor2025 - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I'm not so sure AMD's losing money on their 3xxx series silicon with these price cuts. The underlying technology is still same as as the 2xxx series, with die-shrink and optimization as main R&D spent for the 3xxx series. Also, as long as their GPU is selling, they have the cashflow to continue their business. Sure, crushing debt is bad, but if you maintain the cash flow, it's still a viable business.The EVGA SSC is bad for the price/performance, especially considering that at you can get the MSI OCed 8800GT for mere $210 shipped at Newegg.
conorvansmack - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I'm looking forward to the comparison of the mid-range cards with an 8800GT. I still stuck deciding between an 8800GT and an 8800GTS that comes with Crysis. I guess I should hit the forums with this one.semo - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
"Our testbed remained identical to what we used in our launch article"are you using 2 9775s or just one. it wouldn't make any difference in games either way, would it?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
That'd be 2 x 9775s, I've updated the test table. And no, they don't really make a difference in the games we're testing here today.Boushh - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
'Neither card has a passively cooled reference design'Guru3D has reviewed a passivly cooled 9600GT from ECS with an Actic Cooler on it.
dcalfine - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
That chart was made in Keynote or NumbersYou guys are all Mac users
(not that that's a bad thing)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Close :)Microsoft Office 2008, on the Mac obviously.
SilthDraeth - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I am not sure how long you have been around here, but... Anand the guy the website is named after did a "month with a Mac" article quite a while ago, and has been using it since.