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
Final Words
As we suspected in our original review, the GeForce 9600 GT and Radeon HD 3870 are quite competitive with one another thanks to AMD's most recent price cuts.
From a performance standpoint, the Radeon HD 3870 comes out slightly ahead by outperforming the 9600 GT in one more game (and two benchmarks). The 9600 GT, although winning fewer benchmarks, manages a higher margin of victory in those games that it does win in. Performance issues in Quake Wars and Call of Duty 4 give the nod to NVIDIA, especially when you take into account a lower average selling price for the 9600 GT.
Looking back at our power consumption numbers, the 9600 GT does run a bit cooler under load, while the 3870 has a lower thermal envelope at idle. Neither card has a passively cooled reference design, so HTPCers will either want to look for something aftermarket or go further down the food chain for a truly silent PC.
If you're deciding between overclocked and stock 9600 GTs, EVGA's SSC version showed a 10% increase in performance for just over a 12% increase in price. The problem is that if you can afford a 12% increase in price over a stock 9600 GT, you may want to start looking at even faster GPUs.
Next week we'll have a follow-up looking at how the 9600 GT stacks up to the 512MB Radeon HD 3850 and the almighty 8800 GT 512.
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madgonad - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Is it even possible to benchmark an MMO due to the required server interaction?Sinerider - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I've seen several OLD benchmarks. Heck, I've used FRAPS plenty of times... I suppose there are problems with latency, connection, etc - but it'd be nice to get ballparks between brands.leexgx - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
mmo norm need more cpu then any thing els and an ok video cardSinerider - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I've always found it strange that nobody seems to include MMORPG's in the game performance review sections - WOW, EQII - these are games that draw high upgrade ratio's, and when I did play, I was always desperately looking for larger review bases that included them - especially EQII.Probably doesn't matter much because it's an old game, but sheesh - hundreds of thousands, or in WOW's case, millions play, and a tonne are always upgrading - would seem worthwhile to me.
More directly related to the article: It's a tough call for me between this new 9600 or waiting to see what AMD has up it's sleeve... either way, looks like I'll be holding off just a little bit longer for an upgrade. I would say though, this seems to be a great time for midrange!
-Sinerider
wht1986 - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I agree. I play EQII about 95% of my gaming time. I am using an OC MSI 3870 now @ 1920x1200, but like any geek (err computer enthusiast) I always want to see more framerates/ete candy/etc. Would love to see an eq2 comparison.DigitalFreak - Sunday, February 24, 2008 - link
EQ2's engine was created when CPUs were projected to reach 10Ghz by now. It uses the CPU for stuff that should definitely be done on the GPU. Having a faster CPU will get you much more of a performance increase than upgrading beyond a Geforce 7x series.KnightProdigy - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
MMOs are not included as network speed and server lag come into play and do not accurately depict HW perfomance numbers.LostPassword - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
clubit has better prices for 9600gt, but shipping is slow for meStupidMonkey - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
how would this compare to a 7800GT?leexgx - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
my 8800 gtx is faster then 2x 7800 gtx cards in SLI so 1 7800 ant goign to be an show stopper the 9600 gt is just under 8800 GT speeds (but do rember that 9600 gt 64, as the 8800 gt has 112? so when the 9800 type of cards come out thay should be 2x as fast as Nvidia stated then an 8800)