When the Smoke Clears & Prices Settle: GeForce 9600 GT vs. Radeon HD 3870
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 22, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Yesterday saw the introduction of NVIDIA’s GeForce 9 series of GPUs, starting with the GeForce 9600 GT. Carrying a MSRP of $169 - $189, the GeForce 9600 GT was designed to fill a void in NVIDIA’s product lineup. The GeForce 8600, NVIDIA’s original sub-$200 competitor was being sorely beaten by AMD’s Radeon HD 3850. The GeForce 9600 GT was introduced to rectify the situation.
Had the world remained the same, the GeForce 9600 GT would have competed with and done a good job of destroying the Radeon HD 3850. However, AMD didn’t remain still and quietly reduced the prices of its Radeon HD 3800 series GPUs in the channel. The GeForce 9600 GT no longer was a competitor of the Radeon HD 3850, but rather up against the 3870.
A 256MB Radeon HD 3850 will set you back around $150, while the 512MB models are $170 parts. Stock clocked GeForce 9600 GTs are doing a good job of hovering right at $179.99, while factory overclocked cards will set you back closer to $200. The Radeon HD 3870 has now dropped to below $200 and we even found one for about the same price as a 9600 GT. The table below is a small sample of what we found at some popular e-tailers:
| Vendor | ATI Radeon HD 3870 | NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT | eVGA GeForce 9600 GT SSC |
| Newegg | $184.99 | $179.99 | $209.99 |
| mwave | $209.90 | $179.90 | N/A |
| NCIX | $189.92 | $179.00 | $204.13 |
| Tiger Direct | $199.99 | $199.99 | N/A |
| ZipZoomfly | $224.99 | $179.99 | N/A |
| Average | $201.96 | $183.95 | $207.06 |
On average the Radeon HD 3870 is more expensive than the GeForce 9600 GT. If you look at absolute lowest pricing, the Radeon is within $5 of the 9600 GT, making these two competitors.
Given the most recent pricing data, we took a closer look at Radeon HD 3870 vs. GeForce 9600 GT performance. Our testbed remained identical to what we used in our launch article, we’ve merely added a few more game tests. We stuck to a single resolution per title, so for resolution scaling have a look back at our original GeForce 9600 GT review.
The Test
| CPU: | 2 x Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 (3.2GHz/1600MHz) |
| Motherboard: | Intel D5400XS (Intel 5400) |
| Chipset: | Intel 5400 |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 8.1.1.1010 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | Seagate 7200.9 300GB SATA |
| Memory: | 2 x 2GB Micron FB-DIMM DDR2-8800 |
| Video Card: | ATI Radeon HD 3870 NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT SSC |
| Video Drivers: | ATI: Catalyst 8.2 NVIDIA: 174.12 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
Game Test Settings
| Game | Resolution | AA | AF | Detail Settings |
| Bioshock | 1600 x 1200 | 0X | 1X | Highest in-game |
| Call of Duty 4 | 1600 x 1200 | 0X | 16X | Highest in-game |
| Crysis | 1600 x 1200 | 0X | 1X |
High Quality defaults |
| ET: Quake Wars | 1600 x 1200 | 0X | 16X | Highest in-game |
| ET: Quake Wars | 1600 x 1200 | 4X | 16X | Highest in-game |
| Half Life 2: Episode Two | 2560 x 1600 | 0X | 16X | Highest in-game |
| Half Life 2: Episode Two | 2560 x 1600 | 4X | 16X | Highest in-game |
| Oblivion | 1600 x 1200 | 0X | 16X | Ultra High Quality defaults |
| Oblivion | 1600 x 1200 | 4X | 16X | Ultra High Quality defaults |
| S.T.A.L.K.E.R. | 1600 x 1200 | 0X | 16X | Highest in-game |
| Unreal Tournament 3 | 2560 x 1600 | 0X | 16X | Highest in-game |
| World in Conflict | 1600 x 1200 | 0X | 0X | Medium Quality defaults (with Heat Haze, Debris Physics and DX10 Enabled) |
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dingetje - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
i would be very interested to see how the 9600GT 512MB stacks up against the recently released 8800GS 384MB , especially regarding overclockingZak - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I wish I had put my 8800GTX on eBay couple of weeks ago. Now I'm going away on vacation for 3 weeks. Perhaps when I come back the 9800GTX or 9900GTX will be out:) I wonder if it'll allow Crysis on Very High at 1920x1200. Maybe I'll give Vista a try again if SP1 comes out about the same time!Z.
Imnotrichey - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
In yesterdays article, it said the Crysis benchmarks were ran at medium quality and got 41.5 FPS, and in this article it says its at the high quality settings.Is it the medium or high quality settings?
Im guessing they are both supposed to be medium considering my 8800 GTS gets pretty choppy at high settings.
Thorsson - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
One of the most important pieces of info is totally missing. Which card overclocks better?Aberforth - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Too bad....in a few months we are going to see most demanding games ever made and then you can decide whether this is a mid-rage or low end. Future geometry shaders will prolly kill this card one day :DBigLan - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Any word on how stock 9600's overclock? Is it realistic to think you'll be able to match the speeds of the overclocked cards, and if so, is the maximum overclock on stock and factory-overclocked cards the same?I really don't see the point in paying a premium for factory overclocked cards, you can do it yourself for free and very little risk (just overclock in small incremements and you won't fry your card.). Paying for a better cooler makes much more sense imo.
OrSin - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Not sure what WoC is, but we get a few RTS games. We got 10+ FPS. And Oblivion and Bioshock might as well be FPS to me.When is the industry going to try to do something else. It seems we have to wait for Blizzard to come up with SC for people to jump on some other bandwangon.
kilkennycat - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Seems as if the forced price cuts on the 3850 and 3870 are likely to have reduced AMD's profit on the associated GPUs suddenly to zero. I cannot see their board partners being at all willing to swallow any part of that price cut. I suspect that AMD might have had to rebate a large part of the GPU costs to their board-partners for boards already in the pipeline to have them go along with the drastic price-cut.nVidia has 1.8 billion in the bank and AMD is ~ $3 billion in the red. nVidia can sell their GPUs to their board partners with a very low profit margin for a very long time. The forced price-cuts by AMD to match the nVidia partner prices bleed away AMD/ATi's ability to recover the huge development costs on their silicon. No development-cost recovery - can't self-finance future development. With Intel on one side and nVidia on the other and both successfully squeezing AMDs profit margins on all of AMD's new products, time is not on AMD's side. I suspect that AMD's propects for borrowing more money for product development are becoming very limited indeed with the current world-wide banking turmoil. (For a glimpse at the costs of modern GPU silicon development, the nVidia families of GPUs that power the 8xxx series took about $400million to design and bring to production... )
DerekWilson - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
The 55nm process offers a size advantage over the 65nm process. We haven't confirmed die sizes ... so ... I might be wrong (i'm not in town and i can't check), but I think the R670 is smaller than the G94.Maybe Anand can do a quick check?
*poke
Wirmish - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
8800 (G80) -> 484 mm²8800 (G92) -> 324 mm²
8600 (G84) -> 173 mm²
9600 (G92) -> 240 mm²
2900 (R600) -> 450 mm²
38x0 (RV670) -> 190 mm²
Do the maths.