Nvidia's GeForce 9600 GT Tested

It makes me uber excited for the GX2 and other 9-series cards!

Just Makes me want an 8800GT 512MB, lol. still nice to see that NVIDIA is moving forward with the 9xxx series cards though.

You could always look up the Video Card comparison charts to see how a 7900GT would stack in games with similar settings.

I play Oblivion mostly and it sucks knowing that my 7900GT KO 512 can't run 1280x1024 2xAA 4xAF with Bloom on and MANY performance modifications with a 3GHz E6600 and 2GB DDR2-800, and still get less than 30fps outdoors. I want a GTS 512 and step-up to the GX2 in 3 months.

Ahhh <sigh of relief> Let the price wars begin. ^ you said it compy, competition = win for us.

I would like to see 3870 xfire vs 9600 SLI next.

Couple of mistakes in the article at the end. The Dual card graph and the Recap graphs are wrong and make no sense. Otherwise, nice "full" article.

Ask and yee shall recieve.

Firingsquad has a 7900GS in with a wide assortment of 9600GT clock speeds and other cards:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page4.asp

Although, they put the 7900GS in the Oblivion HDR + FSAA tests (which the card doesn't support, so who knows what they were running with it - HDR or FSAA & Bloom?)

LegionHardware has a 512MB 7900GS in their OC'ed 9600GT review:
http://www.legionhardware.com/docu [...] id=724&p=2

Any rumored release dates on 9800GT/GTS/GTX cards (if that's the naming convention to be used)? Now that the 9600 is out, maybe there are more accurate rumors! Hehe.

for some strange reason every time a new product comes out it still doesn't make me want to upgrade. I want something exciting and new. this just doesn't do it for me.

I picked up an 8800GS from the Egg for $149.99 even.

If this is midrange for 9 series then the 9800GTX is going to be scary

Shoot, Newegg had the MSI 8800GT for $185 AR last week. Much better buy than either of these IMO.

$70? LOL, Argh, I missed that one.

Around the time 8800GT 512MB came out. They had like 2 in stock.

Damn Frys.

For sure. The performance should be enough to excite strangestranger up there. The GPU is so hindered in the 9600, if running full tilt for the GTX...should be interesting. Hopefully with ATI in the race now, NV won't get to cocky with the prices like they did with the 8800s

9800GTX isnt going to be anything special, as much has been repeated MANY times.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php? [...] 1&Itemid=1

"A G92 with Tri SLI support

We learned that the new G92 based card will be branded as 9800GTX. From what we know it is a card similar to the 8800GT(S) but it has two SLI connectors.

Finally, there will be a card to replace the retired 8800GTX. We don%u2019t know how many people will go out and buy three high end cards, but you never know.

Geforce 9800 GX2, a dual chip card, will work with quad SLI, while Tri SLI works with three single chip cards with two connectors. It will be fun to compare the performance of three 9800GTX cards against two 9800 GX2 cards."

Did you really expect nvidia to come out with a super new chip when these ones work fine as they are??

Or 9800GTX, which is it

I would take an HD3870 over the 9600GT simply for the better stock cooling. You can get them at the same price and the overlcock well. The pros and cons of each card are about even, but xfire scalability with intel chipsets and the dual slot cooler would sway.

However, I got my 8800GT 512 basically for free, so I could careless either way!!!!!!!

I completely agree. Oblivion has been out for two friggin years, and the best cards on the market still can't play a comfortable 60fps in most demanding settings. While Nvidia's 9xxx release may be exiting for some it means nothing to me. When I see a card that can chew through Oblivion for under 200$, then we can do business.

Now the Intel Wolfdale on the other hand. That has made me a little giddy. Maybe Intel should purchase Nvidia. I'm not joking.

I can't wait to see the benchmarks on the water cooled 9800. Let's see how much better it is than the black pearl. Here are the black pearl specs.

http://www.evga.com/products/morei [...] P2-N888-AR

So when are these price drops going to affect the rest of the world? The HD3870 is still minimum $256 here.

Regarding the article...

In general, I thought it was great. But one thing that I find a bit... odd is the Performance Recap at the end. While I like the idea of an overall gaming performance graph, I don't know that its results are completely reflective of the individual tests that it's based upon. I mean, is 10 FPS in Oblivion really equal to 10 FPS in Crysis?

Wouldn't a relative graph at the end be more useful? IOW, if the 8800GT 512MB was the fastest card in every test, why not show a graph at the end that reflects how each card performed relative to it in every test?

For example, if we were simply comparing the 8800GT 512MB and the 9600GT 512MB, we would see...
Crysis: 8800GT = 44.5 FPS, 9600 GT = 34.9 FPS
STALKER: 8800GT = 54.4 FPS, 9600 GT = 46.5 FPS
Oblivion: 8800GT = 97.2 FPS, 9600 GT = 91.7 FPS
UT3: 8800GT = 123.6 FPS, 9600 GT = 109.2 FPS
AVERAGE: 8800GT = 79.925 FPS, 9600GT = 70.575 (8800GT 512MB = 13.2% better FPS than 9600GT)

Crysis (1280x1024, no AA/AF): 8800GT 512MB = 27.5% better FPS than 9600GT
STALKER (1280x1024): 8800GT 512MB = 17.0% better FPS than 9600GT
Oblivion (1280x1024): 8800GT 512MB = 6.0% better FPS than 9600GT
Unreal Tournament III (1280x1024, no AA/AF): 8800GT 512MB = 13.1% better FPS than 9600GT
AVERAGE: 8800GT 512MB = 15.9% better FPS than 9600GT

So, with just these four games, it looks like there's a decent difference between simply the average of the FPS values of each game and the average of the relative difference between them for each game. The second value, though, is actually rather close to the difference shown by the Tom's Hardware Average Performance graph, so maybe they're already taking this into consideration somehow.

Anyway, just thought it might be worth mentioning. But maybe I'm just being an idiot and I overlooked something. (I am a history major, not a math major. )

the 9600(whatever) ain't no da** 9 series card?

Until they come out with a real new architecture its an 8650 at best...

While they aren't as up to date as they should be, Tom's GPU guides have as the last page "what about this other card?", which lists Nvidia on one side and ATI on the other to see comparative generations. The recommendation is to only upgrade if the new card is two steps above. Here's the one from February 2008:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/0 [...] page7.html

Three tiers actually

so what is the time to upgrade the 8800GT?