9600GT vs. HD3870: Which to get?

Because the HD3870 also beats the 9600GT in reviews.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_9600...

I only see 2 games that the HD3870 significantly wins.

Also the 3870 has a better cooling solution, and better HD-playback

Dunno about the better HD-playback but according to [H], the 9600GT runs cooler than the HD3870 and the 8800GT thanks to the new bigger fan: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ2Niw2...

The 9600GT also takes up less power, a tad less than the HD3850.

Can you show me a link containing info on the 3870 having better HD-playback?

and my farts beat them all

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/21/nvidia_geforce_9...

And I say whichever is cheaper get it.
AMD DID drop the costs of its 38xx series.

Tomshardware, this site, just did a review on the 3870 and the 9600GT. To sum it up, the 3870 wins the majority of benchmarks without AA. The 9600GT win's a few more, but by a narrow margin, when AA is enabled.

Long story short, you probably won't be able to tell the difference between the two, go with what's less expensive.

Also, the 38xx series does handle HDTV and video type work a lot better from what I've seen, especially dealing with overscan issues and scaling resolutions.

and the 3870 has an audio controller on the card and suppprts VIVO. basic 9600gt lacks certain features, whereas the other one is really good for future proofing thanks to the displayport.

true, toms review of 9600GT shows that it is behind the 3875 without filters. n beats, or lose with small margin with AA.

n with the prices cut of 3870. it is the perfect thing to get. specially if u wanna go crossfire.

Anandtech also did a review showing the HD3870 on top.

They are close, and we all know that the ATI produces better images then NVIDIA period. Nvidias drivers tweak a few extra fake frames for numbers. BIG DEAL. Seeing is believing.

And I prefer to see a higher framerate over negligible IQ differences.

Go for both   Nah, joking. Get any that's avaialable on the market whichever cheaper   That's it. True that AA filtering enabled the 9600GT has a slightly advantage, but without AA enabled it's otherwise. With this situation all come down to the price  

And whether or not AA is important to you.

Lets get the long and short of it, what do you want to use you card for? Video playback, editing, gaming? Knowing these things would go a long ways to helping you figure out whats best for you.

I like my opinion better:
I rather see better IQ over a few negligible frame rates

I expect you to like your opinion better.

Lol, you would be suprised what those "few negligible frame rates" will do for a card when your pushin a game that tries to wreck havoc on your video card. Id also like to know how nvidia tweaks the card for a few extra frames, unless your talking benchmarks, thats just not possible.

Why don't you wait a little while so that the prices fall. That way, you get a card with the latest drives, detailed reviews, and the lowest price. Is there more to say?

Head on over to Anandtech. They have matchups up many of the newest games-http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3235

That may influence your decision.

Lol, for his price range, and what hes looking at there is no reason to wait, if you took everyones advice and waited, ie, new cards, new cpus, you would never build a computer, i hate it when people say wait, and what is he supposed to wait for? only new cards coming out are high end, since the 9600 has already came out.

Buy whichever is cheaper, super easy. If price is equal, I'd probably get the ATI, because A comes before N in the alphabet.

Give me your address, I will donate the extra $40 and you can get the 8800GT.

What is $40? A tank of gas....at max, an extra day of work...$40 is easy to justify. Throw in the extra cash and get a better card than both of them. Get the EVGA, use the step up program when the 9800GT comes out and you got yourself a nice setup. Unless you are like 12 and have to do chores at home and it will take 2 mnths to collect $40.

On a serious note...do you want to bump up to xfire/SLI? What resolutions do you game at? What titles do you play? That all factors in to choosing 9600 vs 3870 since they are pretty close to the same thing.

^ maybe 40 is not alot in USA. but 40USD in other countries is really big number.

ill give u my account number. 40USD for sure will help me to get some coolings for my case.

So you def don't live in Europe. Where are you from?

Anyone willing to benchmark that?  



I agree.
But,
I love 2nd place debates  

Somewhat rhetorical thread since this had already been discussed a few times and in threads in which E participated.

Why buy a Ford over a GM?

9600GT and HD3870 are pretty much equal. On one hand you have the lower priced but less featured 9600GT. On the other hand you have the 3870 which does cost a little more, but has better picture quality and is DX10.1 compliant. Performance wise though I think the 3870 has a slight edge, but it's not really worth the extra $30. You'll also probably never see or notice DX10.1 stuff over DX10.

So if you plan on keeping this card forever then get the 3870 and if you upgrade every year or 2 get the 9600GT. The best option is still to get the 8800GT, but it's a toasty boy and does cost a little more.

Two words. Chrome 400

Because the 3870 might end up being cheaper than the 9600gt, because it's faster with filters off and the posibility is there to crossfire it if you so want, if you don't already have a Nvidia mobo. If your the kind of person who wants to get their money's worth from your graphics card, you'll keep it for a long while, and you'll find that over time using high levels of AA&AF, or even any AA, will start to be something out of your reach. Come that day a 3870 will be holding up a little better than a 9600gt. In a years time most games will be crysis-like hard on your system, and a 3870 will look a little less sad than a 9600gt by then, in amongst rv770 and g200 cards.

Man spoon i sure hope in the next year we dont see crysis like games as far as taxing cpu and gpu. Especially as i just bought my card, and definetly dont want to upgrade it in the next year or two. Although i hear crysis is reaal perty, id hate to have to spend even more money on my comp to get playable framerates.

Yeah boy, Rockin' the Global Illumination with the Crome 44-0 !!

Does anyone know if RV700s are supposed to xfirex with RV670s?

That would make me strongly consider going with the 3870 if you could throw in a "4000" series later down the road for a little extra kick. If that held true, you could keep leapfrogging your cards with a hybrid setup until ATI or PCIe goes out of biznaz.

Haha, dude...you and chrome need to get a room.

I think the bottom line is that we all should all be happy that regardless of motherboard (NVidia, Intel, AMD), and regardless of whether it is Crossfire or SLI, there are now two roughly equivalent upgrade options. E.g., prior to 3850/3870, you were at a cost disadvantage if you had an Intel or AMD Crossfire board. And prior to the 9600GT, the same would go for those with NVidia boards. Now both camps have access to roughly the same performance at roughly the same price.

That said, if what SpinachEater said is right (can xfire RV670 and 700), the AMD fanboys will have more economical upgrade paths.

Hello to Randomizer and GreatApe the videocard guru...
in my humble opinion the best bang for the hard earned buck today is spelled
A T I...
mis dos centavos...

I would have to agree with you Husky, with amd taking over ati, amd fanboys will probably have much to look forward too in the future, cuz i dont see amd optimizing there products to work together better then with the nvidia options. The only downside here, is we could see another apple in the making, if they decide to not support nvidia anymore in favor of the ati cards. And you have to admit, it probably wouldnt hurt there bottom end for both companies if they decided to go that route.

For w/e reason 9600GT's scale extremely well in SLI.




You cannot deny, that is EXTREMELY impressive. If 9800GX2 is anything like this, nvidia are going to walk all over amd.

Just making sure I'm not missing anything here. I read tons of reviews, with [H] showing some interesting results. I'm not going SLI/Crossfire so there's no need to address that.

Is there still an issue with the fan on the 3870?

It depends on the 3870 I think. I would go with the 3870. Its similar but a bit faster. Also its a bit more future proof. I think 320 shaders will be better in future games (that are more shader intensive) than 64. If the 9600GT had 96 or 112 I would't say definately 9600GT.

You know it doesn't actually have 320, it has 64 which basically can do 5 things each.


If it had 320 nvidia type ones it would rocket. Didn't you ever wonder why 320 doesn't beat 64 by 5times lol.

HD3870 damnit!

So it all boils down to price. I seen the 8800GT dip under $200, making it a great deal. However, I have a very limited budget of around $170, and if by chance I can find an 3870 that can fit my budget, I was wondering if it would be worth it.

Here is what I like to do. I don't know if it is legit or if anyone uses it for the "scaling performance" measurements but I like it for some reason. I take the SLI or xfire performance in FPS and divide that by 2 and then divide that number by the single FPS performance (is is a lot like what they did but a little different). Multiply by 100% and you have a number that represents how much guster you are getting out of each GPU on average or how much each GPU is contributing to the xfire/SLI FPS.

So for COD4 1680x1050 8xAA 16xAF as an example....[(96.26 FPS / 2) / (49.227 FPS)] * 100% = 97.8% So that says that I am getting 97.8% performance out of each GPU in comparison to the single GPU performance where 100% would be a perfect scaling and anything over 100% is breaking the law of physics   ....or just weird software issues...

But yeah...that is right up there with 3870s in xfire...(using that calc that I pulled out of my arse they get like 97% ish on the same settings)

That's not very accurate, SE. Isn't the theoretical maximum performance gain for SLI 80%? Obviously 97.8% is much higher...unless you're pulling random numbers from the air.

Don't see how its 80%. Max can be higher than 100% depending on situation as can be seen in those tests. Dunno how it can be over 100% but I'm guessing bottlenecked somehow. Max I would of thought is 100% but I guess not. Maybe in a certain area of a map it dont have enough power and just fails wheras 2 cards can get over the hill?


Duno.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Link_Interface



I wouldn't trust Nvidia's own numbers, but we know for sure it ain't 2.0x.

It may just be me,but I always look at the warranties on these items too! EVGA,XFX being a couple of the companies offering LIFETIME(Even Double Lifetime) is a bonus also. That just goes to tell you that they will stand behind their product 110%. Does sapphire, diamond, visiontek, or gecube offer these warranties? Not that I have seen. It is just good to know that if something does and can go wrong,your not out all that money after a year of having the card.And have to drop another couple hundred dollars to game again. Just my Opinion.