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
The Value in Overclocking: EVGA’s 9600 GT SSC
EVGA is currently shipping the highest clocked GeForce 9600 GT. Dubbed the EVGA GeForce 9600 GT SSC, this card runs its core at 740MHz and memory at 1.950GHz (data rate).
| Game | Stock GeForce 9600 GT | EVGA GeForce 9600 GT SSC | Percent Increase |
| Core | 650MHz | 740MHz | 13.8% |
| Shader | 1.625GHz | 1.835GHz | 12.9% |
| Memory | 1.80GHz | 1.95GHz | 8.3% |
You can buy this card directly from EVGA for $219.99, or if you shop around you'll shave off about $10, pricing it 12.6% higher than the average GeForce 9600 GT. Today's question? Is it worth it?
We ran the same benchmarks from the previous page on the EVGA GeForce 9600 GT SSC card and compared it directly to the stock GeForce 9600 GT:
The overclocked EVGA actually yielded some very healthy gains in the 10 - 12% range in most of our tests, the only exceptions being World in Conflict and Quake Wars which were both around 2%. On average, EVGA managed to boost performance approximately 10% after a 12.6% increase in board price.
Given that this is a price-sensitive mid-range part, any significant increase in price had better be more than worth its corresponding increase in performance. The problem is that at $208, you're only $10 away from an 8800 GT 512MB which should have no problems outperforming the 9600 GT. The 9600 GT makes the most sense at the $169 - $179 price range, and at those price points you're going to be dealing with stock clock speeds.
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qquizz - Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - link
I am looking forward to this, "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."Cenarius - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
Final sentence in review reads:"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."
Been checking daily, and now we're heading into the middle of the week AFTER next week, so where's the follow-up already? :-|
ufoall - Monday, March 3, 2008 - link
may i know what will be the price after 2 months...BenSkywalker - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
A quick comment-The eVGA 675MHZ clock and MSI 700MHZ clocked part are both available from New Egg for 179.99. Obviously neither are clocked to 740 but the MSI part is closer to the SSC then stock and sits at the 'regular' MSRP.
Samus - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
Hard to believe you can have a card that play's Crysis this well for < $200.Crysis 1600x1200 at 40+FPS
Xajel - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
wonder why Anandtech didn't test both cards with overclocking in mind, I think it will be very intersting, and even the OC results for 9600GT was only compared in persentage to it self, I hope to see more detailed comparition for these two babiesdingetje - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
i agree, and i'm most interested in oc'ing results of the cards with non stock cooling and the faster memory installed (0.8 or 1 ns memory)araczynski - Sunday, February 24, 2008 - link
sounds to me like the smart money's on waiting for the 9800 series to come out and leaving this neutered dog for the OEM's to put into their systems and brag about.strafejumper - Sunday, February 24, 2008 - link
would like to see this new card compared to a 8800 GT 512MB in price, performance, and price/performancesolitude1951 - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
This is sorta off topic but it looks like a good place to get reliable info. I've got an old Dell 8400. It's got the 3.4 gig chip with raid on. Will my computer even run one of the cards being discussed. I can't afford a new computer but I need more speed. UT3 demo stutters at the lowest display settings. Any advice?