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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ChronoReverse - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
The 7950's can't beat the x1950's much less the 7900 series. The gap has only widen as more modern games came out.Aberforth - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Crysis benchmark @ medium settings? gimme a break, Obviously this review is designed to show 9600GT in good light.rcc - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
As I read it, it's designed to show how it compares to similar cards. Sure they could provide test in in Crysis at full settings, but it's a bit like providing grand prix lap times on a Tercel.Staples - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
Either that or this was done very sloppy. The 8800GT 256 is mysteriously missing in all the benchmark which do not require a lot of video memory. In these tests, the 8800GT 256MB would win. I smell a rat.Kurotetsu - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
"The benchmarks don't prop up the card I bought so it must be bogus!"If the 3850 was leading in that test, you wouldn't be complaining at all.
Griswold - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
(_,_)pmonti80 - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
It's just a review made at the kind of settings most of the cards analized will be used. How useful can be a review were the cards are around 15 fps?ncage - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
For those who want a more lengthy writeup with more games tested and a bigger selection of video cards then check out the review at tomshardware. I wanted a comparison between the 8800GT 512MB & the 9600GT which is available at toms. I will tell you they are pretty close in benchmark numbers but the 8800GT still wins in every case which im quite happy about since i just bought a 8800GT :). We will see how good value the 9600GT is after the etailers do their price gouging. Still Nvidia is doing a VERY good job in bring competition to the market.knitecrow - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
bah... i am not going back to tom for anythingmurphyslabrat - Thursday, February 21, 2008 - link
I am sure this is on everyone's mind: overclock the thing already!