Bringing Competition to Midrange: The GeForce 9600 GT Raises NVIDIA's Sub $200 Bar
by Derek Wilson on February 21, 2008 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Thankfully, those who spend less than $200 on their new graphics hardware will finally have a reason to upgrade. AMD's introduction of the Radeon HD 3850 handled that nicely on their end a few months back, and NVIDIA has now followed suit with a part that brings competition back to another market segment. Something we haven't had a good amount of for a very long time now and we are certainly thankful for its return.
We have heard murmurs that AMD will be lowering prices on their HD 3000 series, but we don't have any firm details as of yet. If this is the case, then we may see stronger competition at the lower end of the spectrum when looking at the high end Radeon HD 3850 parts. We will be doing a follow up next week looking at the 512MB versions of the 3850 and the GeForce 8800 GT in order to answer some questions we have following these tests.
From what we have seen, price, clock speed, memory size, and features are going to be the selling points here rather than which company designed the GPU. Of course, if AMD does drop its price, they could very likely have a winner on their hand. Especially if we find out that the 512MB part helps to smooth over some of the rough spots we've seen with the 3850 so far. Before we can wrap this up with a neat little bow, we simply have to answer a couple more questions and wait and see what happens with price.
Rather than seeing the fact that we need more info as a bad thing, we are very grateful that we have this problem: the competition is hot enough to push both NVIDIA and AMD to do all they can to provide the best value for the consumer. And the real winner in that situation is everyone in the market for a graphics card under $200.
Update: AMD has cut prices on its Radeon HD 3800 series, to see how this changes things take a look at our price-performance comparison here.
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pmonti80 - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
That's probably becuase it's a transicional product, in one or two months you won't be able to buy one.poohbear - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
nice review, but i expected to see more cards compared with the 9600gt from a site like anandtech, especially the 8800gt 512mb version which everybody's been buying. are you guys on a budget or something?anachreon - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Somehow this review feels a little sloppier than the past AnandTech video card reviews I have come to trust. The cards represented in various tests are inconsistent, and the lack of a 512mb 8800 GT, as well as AA and AF, in the tests is baffling.DerekWilson - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I don't understand what you mean about the cards represented being inconsistent. We tested the exact same six cards in every tests and the same 2 multiGPU configurations as well ... the only graph that lacks anything is the WiC 16x12 graph because we could not get the 3850 to complete the benchmark at that resolution.The 512 MB 8800 GT isn't really in competition with these cards in terms of price. Since AMD dropped the price so dramatically, it's more of a direct comparison, and if we had known before hand we would have included something else from the next price point up (like the 512MB 8800 GT).
We can't test everything for every review, and we've got to make trade offs. Sometimes we make the wrong call, and not including the 512MB 8800 GT was one of those time. We'll certainly include it in follow up testing.
Thanks,
Derek Wilson
pmonti80 - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Dereck I think what he means is that at 1st sight the results are little bit strange. I had to check several reviews to see that the results are the same (how could i ever doubt you? ;)).An example of strange results at 1st sight is the 256MB 8800GT. Also the fact that filters give an advantage to the 9600 GT and the test without filters give an advantage to the 3870.
GTaudiophile - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
So if I have a eVGA GeForce 7900GT, which would be the better upgrade? A 8800 GT with 512MB RAM or a 9600GT? Can you get a 9600GT with 512MB RAM?xsilver - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
7900gt to 9600gt wouldnt be a colossal upgrade. It would probably be better to get the 8800gt or 8800gts otherwise stick it out with what you've got until the next 9xxx part rolls around.LoneWolf15 - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
No AA/AF makes these benchmarks nearly useless. Also, while Oblivion is a great game, it is now a dated game, and no longer a good standard to measure cards by.I'm sorry, but I couldn't base a buying decision off of this review.
semo - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
wouldn't it be better to put in 2 higher clocked dual core processors. aren't 4 cores more than enough for games today?peldor - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
What's up with no AA tests at all and in some cases no AF? Seems like half a review without those.