Should I get a 9600GT for $164?

[rich168]

would it be wise to say:

2 9600gt = 1 8800gt

 

[NinjaJedi]

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: NinjaJedi

Originally posted by: jaredpace
inst an 8800gt faster than this? You can pick one up online for 188 right now. I don't see any better deal that this.

wow where can you get one for 188?

http://www.ncixus.com/products...X/Galaxy%20Technology/

That is not $181 that's $220 + $12 shipping and then $40 back 6+ weeks later. I really wish people would list the out of pocket expense.

In order to qualify for the rebate you have to purchase the product. In order to purchase the product you have to spend the full amount.

 

[programmer]

"Tomorrow NVIDIA will officially launch the 9600GT and the cost will attract the masses. Between $169 and 189..."

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=10792

 

[NinjaJedi]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...A=0&Description=9600gt

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
200$ for an msi 8800gt OC, with zalman cooler, as long as that one is selling, nothing else is really word getting ...

off brand 8800gt is going for closer to $180 now. I'd personally get the msi oc card for ~$200, too, but for someone who doesn't oc $180 would be tough to pass up. Also, an 8800gt that cheap makes it tough to spend anything over 160 imho now (prices have gone down since my earlier 175 recommendation).

This is a great time to buy an upper-mid/lower-high end video card, there are a plethora of solid options out there in the 150-200 price range. I still maintain that at current pricing levels it's tough to not buy an 8800gt if you can swing the upper end, and for the lower end shoot for a 3850 512 or 9600gt 512 for ~ $150 as prices drop due to our resurgence of that rarely spotted creature known as "competition".

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Aflac
The 9600GT for $164 out the door is a great price. It is a few paces ahead of the HD3870, and even almost matches the 8800GT in performance.

take a standard 9600gt (not XXX) and it is about = 3870 or perhaps a half step behind, especially in higher res games. 3870 prices are down b/c 8800gt is now cheaper. I think that the really interesting battle will be 9600gt 512 vs 3850 512. AMD needs to be about $10 cheaper across the board on that to be competitive, getting us into that $150 price range.

 

[NinjaJedi]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995

Originally posted by: Aflac
The 9600GT for $164 out the door is a great price. It is a few paces ahead of the HD3870, and even almost matches the 8800GT in performance.

take a standard 9600gt (not XXX) and it is about = 3870 or perhaps a half step behind, especially in higher res games. 3870 prices are down b/c 8800gt is now cheaper. I think that the really interesting battle will be 9600gt 512 vs 3850 512. AMD needs to be about $10 cheaper across the board on that to be competitive, getting us into that $150 price range.

With the price of the 3850/3870 set to drop it's going to be a tough battle.

http://www.dailytech.com/AMD+P...rices/article10796.htm

 

[JACKDRUID]

so 9600Gt is actually competing with 3870? which one is faster exactly?

 

[themisfit610]

I read somewhere that 9600gt SLI beat an 8800 ultra.

Seems affordable, and the SLI scaling was very nice, clean 85-100% in Crysis DX10.

I never though SLI could look so attractive.. Under $400 for 8800 ultra level performance?

What do you guys think?

~MiSfit

 

[bryanW1995]

they're pretty close, 9600 gt is probably a small bit faster at lower res but loses ground pretty quickly at higher res. There's a big muck right now in the upper mid / lower high range. they range from 150's to 200, with all 256mb cards<3850 512<9600gt<3870<8800gt 512 being a decent rule of thumb. They probably SHOULD shake out at 150 for 256 mb cards, 160 for 3850 512, 170 for 9600gt, 180 for 3870, and 190 for 8800gt for the next couple of months, but keep your eyes peeled for good deals on all of them. You almost need to look at specific games/engines and performance for each card, then decide which card has the best price/perf on your favorites.

edit: @misfit, I'd wait to see what 9800gtx looks like before shelling out for a complete graphics upgrade. that 8800gt you have is very nice, and you could sli it for ~$200 right now. 8800 ultra performance isn't going to mean the same thing in a few months that it does right now, fortunately

 

[frankie38]

Based on the limited reviews so far, the 9600gt has given me pause in thinking about upgrade from 7600gt.

I have read that 9600gt offers better performance than 3870 and slight under performance to the 8800gt.

That said, for the games I play WIC and Crysis the 9600gt is an interesting alternative to the 8800gt.

9600gt uses less power, less expensive, runs cooler. The power and heat issue may tip the scales to the 9600gt.

I like the performance of the 8800gt but I'm not sure that I want my fans running at 100% all the time. (noise)

 

[bryanW1995]

get this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814127329

at $205 AR and with a good factory OC it is a GREAT buy. Also, the dual slot cooling solution should, if anything, be quieter than the 9600gt single slot one. All those extra SP's will probably come in handy in future games, too...

 

[lopri]

HD 3850 512MB is really a HD 3870 in disguise. The only difference is clock speed (which can be easily clocked to 3870 level) and heat sink. I should have waited with my HD 3850 purchase.. Then again, AMD cards aren't as much crippled as NV cards by memory size, it seems. Talking about memory size, I wonder what's going on with this trend? G80/G92 just drops balls with smaller frame buffer. (First with GTS 320 and now with GT 256) Is it really Vista or is it NV's drivers?

 

[NinjaJedi]

Originally posted by: JACKDRUID
so 9600Gt is actually competing with 3870? which one is faster exactly?

From the reviews I have seen it's a toss up. I would say it's probably a close tie leaning towards the 9600gt with the 3870 catching up at higher res. Again it will come down to what games you will play and at what res. Looks like the 9600gt consumes less power (at load seems the 3870 is lees at idle) and runs cooler. The 3870 appears quieter and expels the heat out of the case. There are arguments for both cards if they end up being in the same price range. Since I game and watch DVDs 50/50 I like that the 3870 has UVD and on board audio through the DVI to HDMI adapter.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: NinjaJedi

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: NinjaJedi

Originally posted by: jaredpace
inst an 8800gt faster than this? You can pick one up online for 188 right now. I don't see any better deal that this.

wow where can you get one for 188?

http://www.ncixus.com/products...X/Galaxy%20Technology/

That is not $181 that's $220 + $12 shipping and then $40 back 6+ weeks later. I really wish people would list the out of pocket expense.

In order to qualify for the rebate you have to purchase the product. In order to purchase the product you have to spend the full amount.

You asked for it. That's all I could find.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: NinjaJedi

Originally posted by: JACKDRUID
so 9600Gt is actually competing with 3870? which one is faster exactly?

From the reviews I have seen it's a toss up. I would say it's probably a close tie leaning towards the 9600gt with the 3870 catching up at higher res. Again it will come down to what games you will play and at what res. Looks like the 9600gt consumes less power (at load seems the 3870 is lees at idle) and runs cooler. The 3870 appears quieter and expels the heat out of the case. There are arguments for both cards if they end up being in the same price range. Since I game and watch DVDs 50/50 I like that the 3870 has UVD and on board audio through the DVI to HDMI adapter.

It might be a toss up right now but in the future I think 3870 will win with more shader intensive games.

You can tell that HD3000 series have stronger shader compared to 9600gt 64 shader or else it would have a significant lead in all the tests because 9600gt has massive texture fillrate over HD3000 series. This is evident in Anandtech's Oblivion test where shader is just as important. 9600gt loses to 3850 and 3870.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3234&p=4

 

[trajan2050]

The Anandtech review is the worst I've seen from them. Why didn't they test with AA when all the other reviews show the 9600GT matching or beating the 3870 when eye candy is on.

http://www.pcper.com/article.p...522&type=expert&pid=14

First looking at the most pertinent comparison, the 9600 GT can clearly be seen as a superior choice to the AMD Radeon HD 3850 256MB and Radeon HD 3870 512MB

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/...w4LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

The first thing to note is that in all three games tested the 9600 GT was in fact faster than AMD?s fastest single GPU video card, the ATI Radeon HD 3870. At this price point of $169-$189, the 9600 GT competes more with the Radeon HD 3850, but lo and behold, it was besting the 3870 in our game testing. In Crysis it simply had faster shader performance which allowed several in-game settings to be set at ?High? versus ?Medium? on the 3870.

http://www.elitebastards.com/c...&limit=1&limitstart=10


It's the last of these decisions which is probably the smartest move of the lot, turning AMD's Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 into also-rans when it comes to gaming performance with AA turned on in this price range overnight. Although we didn't have a Radeon HD 3800 series board available for our full range of testing today, from the numbers we've compared even the Radeon HD 3870 often fails to keep pace with the GeForce 9600 GT once anti-aliasing is put to use.

 

[amheck]

Man, those 3870's are really falling in price with this new release? I guess that's to be expected with a similar performing card with lower cost.

 

[SniperDaws]

Yeah ive been trying to find a review that used AA and AF on all the games they tested not just 1 or 2, the 9600 seems to like AA and AF a lot.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: trajan2050
The Anandtech review is the worst I've seen from them. Why didn't they test with AA when all the other reviews show the 9600GT matching or beating the 3870 when eye candy is on.

http://www.pcper.com/article.p...522&type=expert&pid=14

First looking at the most pertinent comparison, the 9600 GT can clearly be seen as a superior choice to the AMD Radeon HD 3850 256MB and Radeon HD 3870 512MB

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/...w4LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

The first thing to note is that in all three games tested the 9600 GT was in fact faster than AMD?s fastest single GPU video card, the ATI Radeon HD 3870. At this price point of $169-$189, the 9600 GT competes more with the Radeon HD 3850, but lo and behold, it was besting the 3870 in our game testing. In Crysis it simply had faster shader performance which allowed several in-game settings to be set at ?High? versus ?Medium? on the 3870.

http://www.elitebastards.com/c...&limit=1&limitstart=10


It's the last of these decisions which is probably the smartest move of the lot, turning AMD's Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 into also-rans when it comes to gaming performance with AA turned on in this price range overnight. Although we didn't have a Radeon HD 3800 series board available for our full range of testing today, from the numbers we've compared even the Radeon HD 3870 often fails to keep pace with the GeForce 9600 GT once anti-aliasing is put to use.

We know HD3000 series doesn't do AA as good as Geforce 8. Something to do with dx10.1 feature where AA is handled through shader. This is within specs of dx10.1.

Geforce 8 and this new 9600gt does AA the old fashion way. Through pipes. More tmu or rops it has better it performs.

9600gt does AA well because the old way is actually faster than through shader with current crop of cards. When you eliminate these filters than what you get is "raw" performance #'s. What Anadtech shows. Although it would have been nice if they add some AA #'s in...

 

[apoppin]

What does this mean?

http://www.elitebastards.com/c...&limit=1&limitstart=10

Although we didn't have a Radeon HD 3800 series board available for our full range of testing today, from the numbers we've compared even the Radeon HD 3870 often fails to keep pace

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: apoppin
What does this mean?

http://www.elitebastards.com/c...&limit=1&limitstart=10

Although we didn't have a Radeon HD 3800 series board available for our full range of testing today, from the numbers we've compared even the Radeon HD 3870 often fails to keep pace

I think he was smoking something funny when he wrote that.

 

[Mayukawa]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130328

Special Promo Code starting on 2/22-2/25.
EVGA Superclocked gf 9600GT Final Price: $169.

Dont miss it.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: apoppin
What does this mean?

http://www.elitebastards.com/c...&limit=1&limitstart=10

Although we didn't have a Radeon HD 3800 series board available for our full range of testing today, from the numbers we've compared even the Radeon HD 3870 often fails to keep pace

I think he was smoking something funny when he wrote that.

that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense .. maybe i am reading it wrong but it *appears* they used numbers from earlier testing to compare ... i didn't check to see if they are using Cat 8.2 or not [i'm back on damn 56k dialup so i not loading all the pages i want :|] ... big difference between Cat 8.1 and Cat 8.2.

.. and of course, i have learned to *completely* disregard HardFUD's skewed numbers

 

[SniperDaws]

is it the 8.3's cats everyone is waiting for?