9600GT vs. Radeon 3870: Which is the better weapon?

They perform about the same. 3870 slightly better with aa off, and 9600 slightly better with aa on. At those prices, 9600 is better.

That 3870 you linked is highly overprices. A far better performing g92 8800gts costs $159 after mir, and that 3870 cost $169.

http://www.guru3d.com/category/vga_2/

9600gt has 64 SP forum veteran.

I belive despite the differing arcitectures the two cards are compared at the same benchmarks ll the time. Ever hear of Intel vs. AMD? I think AMD is fast dropping out of benchmark comparisons when Intel is involved, but you get the point.

Well, I have four VISTA DX 10 systems running right now. And I have three DX10 cards currently. For $109 I can get a DX10 card that is possibly better than the best DX10 card I currently own.

Its a waste of time replacing the 3870 with the 9600gt. I do have and like the 9600 but still a waste of time and money...

I'm not 'replacing' and if I were it would not be a wate of time buying a 9600GT for $109. I'm using a 7800GT in one of my VISTA systems. I was looking for a suitable DX10 card and had the opportunity to buy a 9600GT for a small price. I was looking at 8400 for 35 bucks until I saw the 9600GT. The 9600 performs as well as my 3870. A hundred bucks won't fill my gas tank by next month. 20.5 galons x $5. LOL.

http://www.techspot.com/article/88 [...] age10.html

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3235

Yeah I think that Techspot quick summary shows the major role of AA between these two and how they do go back and forth. In the Anand review you lose a bit of that detail about AA to all the other tests.

Yeah, if I get the 9600GT I can install it in my backup system and give my son the 8800GTS 640. he uses XP with a 7900GTO, but some of his friends have mentioned they are gaming with VISTA now. I told him I can install VISTA 64 for him. he's using a 74GB raptor, so I hesitate to install V64 on there. I set up a VISTA 64 machine last week for my wife! LOL! I had to transfer 'everything' office/home from the socket 754 she has used for like the past five years. She was impressed! Do you belive that! She loves AERO and this morning I demonstrated the power of VISTA's search. I can pull up any file of any patient she has on the machine in a second.

I guess I will leave the 3870 in here for now. The last two driver release, 8.4 and 8.5, have worked real well for me. These prices are great on current cards. Be interesting to see what retailers do with new eleases.

I almost bought a card you linked. The 9600GT will do me well for now. I like the fan. 8)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150280

The teens around the neighborhood get a lot of my old cards. My son's buddy Jimmy got my my 1900GT. For free! His Dell gave out and sits in my garage. I threw an entire computer together for him and couldn't get the x800GTO to play WOW! So, I had to to 'give' him my 1900GT! He will RMA I'm sure. Remember Me Always. Ahh, he's a real good kid and deserves a break.

yes but its 200+ lol, the cards I'm talking about are around 100-140.

9600 for 110 bucks is a steal.

Liquid if my nose was runnin' money I'd blow it all on you, but its not.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=egCeIwjIuZM

Well, I can be sarcastic. It's funny, this is only forum I participate in that is not related to humor. I have a rough time makingb the transition between the others and here on a daily basis. If I say anything here that is not serious and backed up by raw 'proof' I get hammered. Like if I said, "Fear of peas" is a good name for a rock band, a number of the guys on this forum wouldn't think it was funny. Watch.

Fear of peas is a good name for a rock band. So is Heroin Diaper. LOL.

That's good to know rabidbunny. I'm looking forward to installing mine and enjoying it too.

Are you replacing a g80 8800gts 640mb with 9600gt? That's not a good idea. They perform nearly the same. You need at least a g92 8800gt for it to be worth an upgrade.
http://en.expreview.com/2008/04/02 [...] p/?page=10

I was in a similar situation as you. I bought the 9600GT over the HD 3870. Below is a link to some benchmarks:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/v [...] html#sect0

The 9600GT overall is the better performer, but you need to focus on the type of games you want to play.

I can't really tell you how good it's performance is because I installed it in my HTPC, which at the moment is not being used for gaming; merely movies and music. I bought it in case I decide to play games on my HTPC instead of my primary PC (on a large HDTV). It also uses less power than the 3870, plus the ECS 9600GT came with a large passive heatsink which is important to me because I want my HTPC to be as silent as possible.

The most expensive video card I ever purchased was an ASUS 5950 Ultra for $375. I paid about the same though for one of my 7800GT's when they were first released. I still have them. I have two 7800GTs and was running them in SLI until I broke off a resistor on one of them. I had to solder it back and the card was acting up so I took it out and ran one 7800. Then I blew the bad card out and re-secured the broken resistor and installed it in an old 939 machine. It work perfect. I think my A8N32-SLI MB is running too hot, not the processor but the system causing the video cards to act up. They run fine seperated. So goes my video card scenario.

Really? Hm..I never knew the 9600 is only 10-15 % faster... Funny how hardware works sometimes...

LOL, I just installed the 8800GTS, set it all up and loaded up Acronis and backed up the entire system! I am too lazy to install Vista 64 right now. Maybe over the holiday. I just couldn't exhaust myself with that install today. His MX518 mouse, G15 keyboard, D Link 2320 wireless card all have Vista 64 drivers. His old HP printer does not and his creative Audigy has 64 drivers, but they are crapola. I don't know if his headphones require a driver. Anyway, i'll get to it. I'm goint to do a dual boot with Vista 64 on his machine. I should have given him the 9600GT. That card is PCIE 2.0 (my X38 is too!). His P5B Deluxe is PCIE 16. That was my deciding factor. I'll see tonight how he likes it upgraded from the 7900GTO. Actually the GTO runs at 625 MHz andthe 8800GTS runs 575 MHz. The memory is at 2200MHz and 640MB on the 8800GTS. The 7900GT has 512MB DDR3, but at 1600MHz, I think.

Excuse my bad typing, been since 1967 since I had the class. 120+ words per minute with 5 mistakes back then. Not bad for a kid!

Oh, I installed the 9600GT in my 965G, e6600, dual boot HDMI back up. Great! I like it a lot! Runs cool at stock speeds too.

See, I moved the 8800GTS 640 out of my HDMI backup xp/Vista dual boot 965G and into my son's Q66600 P5B deluxe 965. That way I can install Vista 64 for him with a DX10 card and see how he likes gaming with Vista 64, had XP with the 7900GTO. By buying the 9600GT I can install it in my Vista/XP backup HDMI system and have a DX10 card. The 9600GT may be better than the card I have in here, my main system, Radeon 3870.

Now it's clear? Clear you read poorly is about it.

Englandr 753, it was not until after I purchased the 9600GT from Newegg that I realized the card may be better than my 3870. That's when I posted the link asking the question. I did not purchase the 9600GT with the intention of replacing the radeon 3870. The thought only occured to me after I had bought the card and realized the two were close in performance. I was looking at cheaper cards on newegg, the 8400-8600 when I came across the 9600GT for $109 after rebate. I bought it with the intention of putting it in my HDMI and frreing up an 8800GTS 640 for my son. He uses XP and a 7900GT. Now I have installed the 8800GTS for him and he likes it. Now he can't wait for me to install Vista 64 which I will do as soon as I have time. The title of my link may be misleading. The 9600GT works really well on my 40" 1080p. I maxed out the resolution and all sliders and the card did a great job so far. I didn't mean to confuse. Thanks.

Btw, I don't own this card, although I'm thinking about one based on benchmarks. It's probably either that, or a 9600gt, or 3870. But the the overclocked 8800gs looks to be a killer. You could grab a 9600gso, which is a rebranded 8800gs from what I understand and try to overclock that some more, though I don't think they come overclocked as high as the 8800gs. They do however have a decent deal on newegg, an ASUS 9600gso for 110, 20 dollar mail in rebate.

The only thing about the 8800gs and 9600 gso is that most of them only have 384 mb of video ram. That said, there is a 9600 gso floating around newegg with 768 mb of ram. But it's 160sih. IF they would bring out something clocked to say 650 mhz on the core with the 768 mb of video ram in the 9600 gso flavor, that card would probably thrash most cards under an 8800gt. Again, look at the benchies. Just throwing another option out there.

Keep in mind that you CAN oc the stock clocked 9600gt to the SSc's speeds and then some. I just use evga's precision software and it works well for me. I don't know which brand of card you bought, but regardless they can be oc'd higher.