SLI performance boost! GeForce 9600GT Review
We have to admit, NVIDIA controlled the middle-to-high range market for almost a long time. But after AMD unveiled their Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3870 the situation have been changed. HD 3850 and HD 3870 is a very successful product, they help AMD gained back lots of the market.
At fitst, NVIDIA what to chop 8800GT’s memory into half, make it 256MB and compete with RV670. But because of the GPU’s high self price, the card is too expansive to compete with the 55nm low-cost RV670.
NVIDIA need a product to fight back. In NVIDIA’s roadmap, 8800GS is only for OEM purpose. But because of the HD 3850 and HD 3870’s success, NVIDIA have to make it official. The card’s total volume is only around 150K, so 8800GS is only a product for a short time.
Both 8800GT 256MB and 8800GS 384MB and 768MB are based on G92, the same GPU with the same amount of transistor. NVIDIA knows use this kind of this GPU to compete in the sub-200$ is a waste of money. The company needs a low-cost shrunk core to win the battle and earn more.
9600GT, a smart shrunk 8800GT have been unveiled by NVIDIA yesterday, it’s price is set between 8600GTS and 8800GTS, directly lock-on its enemy: HD 3850. NVIDIA said, the 9600GT is “big on performance, easy on the wallet“, let’s see it is real or not.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: 9600 GT architecture
Page 3: Core shot and comparison
Page 4: A closer look at 9600 GT
Page 5: Cooler of GeForce 9600 GT
Page 6: Power consumption test
Page 7: Overclocking test
Page 8: HD video playback Test
Page 9: Game performance test: testbed and remarks
Page 10: 9600 GT vs Radeon HD 3850
Page 11: 9600 GT vs Radeon HD 3870
Page 12: 9600 GT vs 8800 GT
Page 13: 9600 GT vs 8800 GS 768MB
Page 14: 9600 GT vs 9600 GT SLI
Page 15: 9600 GT SLI vs 8800 GTS 512MB
Page 16: 9600 GT SLI vs HD 3870X2
Page 17: Final thought
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Nice! I’d like to see some 8800GT SLI vs 9600GT SLI fight based on the same testbed and drivers.
February 23rd, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Fucking great review. Nice one expreview.
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Very nice review, thank you.
Also good to see that SLI scales almost perfectly in many cases. Makes me wanna buy some cards.
February 25th, 2008 at 2:20 am
If NV improved the new drivers in SLI so much how ’bout throwing a pair of 8600GT in the test musek suggested
February 26th, 2008 at 5:14 am
I find it extremely pathetic that Nvidia STILL has not added directx 10.1 or shader 4.1 to their latest cards. Their is absolutely zero excuse for that… except to milk their customers for every last dime in upgrades. At least ATI added the latest technology to their cards months ago. 55nm, ddr4, directx 10.1, shader 4.1 etc…. its the very reason why I chose ATI (I originally had planned on getting and nvidia card till I realized nvidia lack of features.
February 26th, 2008 at 5:54 am
You nitwit. Can you name a single game that uses Directx 10.1 or shader 4.1? Whats the point of having dx 10.1 or dx 5546456 when no game utilizes it? There’s not a single game that takes full advantage of dx 10.0 let alone 10.1 Nincompoop.
February 26th, 2008 at 6:08 am
Not everyone buy’s a gpu for games that are allready released, most of us actually look at a life time of 1-2 years, hopefully 2 years or more. That is if the Feature set on the gpu will last that long.
Tc made the right snap, who cares about a few frames here or there, as long as its all 30+, who cares if your doing 100fps , or 80.. The human eye cannot pick up on the difference, unless there is a spike drop in frames, taking the card with less features is just stupid. 2 years from now when a kickass game comes out that does required 10.1, or 4.1 and tc is thinking about upgrading, he will atleast be able to run the feature set and see what it is like.
With the ati’s he will also be able to upgrade and crossfire his old card with his new card.. See any nvidia doing that recently ? Nope.
February 26th, 2008 at 6:53 am
I can’t remember any other time where people on a blob were flaming each other using the work “Nincompoop”. That cuts pretty low.
Anyway would be much nicer to have this in a single package (9800×2 or whatever) just for the ease of managing one card vs. two.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:28 am
[...] facing off SLI vs. Crossfire seemed a no-brainer. Well, much to the surprise of many, you can see here how 9600GT SLI delivers better performance than an 3870X2 in non-synthetic benchmarks. X2 still has [...]
February 26th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Jeff, Could you update the HD decode tests by including the results from 3850/3870? Nice preview.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Shame that they cannot use the English language at all. Was this a translated Korean test?
February 26th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Oh and why the fook could they not do a test between crossfired 3850’s 3870’s and sli’d 9600GT’s?
We anticipate the new 8.3 Catalyst drivers to bitch slap this review in a few days.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
DirectX 10.1 isn’t worth much, this is what the Far Cry / Crysis guy said
“”We pride ourselves on being the first to adopt any important new technology that can improve our games so you would expect us to get with DX10.1 right away but we’ve looked at it and there’s just nothing in it important enough to make it needed. So we have no plans to use it at all, not even in the future,” said Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek.”
http://arstechnica.com/journals/hardware.ars/2007/11/15/microsoft-crytek-largely-dismiss-directx-10-1
February 26th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
9600GT is definitely an interesting and “good” perf/dollar card but I think 9600GT SLI being “better” is a little premature given the number of benchmarks kept dropping (from 10 to 5 then 2).
The problem with SLI or Crossfire is when they don’t work and cutting the number of benchmarks so testing it with a lot of different benchmarks is also very important.
February 26th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
[...] SLI performance boost! GeForce 9600GT Review http://en.expreview.com/?p=273 Looks like the G92 core still has a lot of fight in it. Check out the [...]
February 26th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
BIASED REVIEW
I’d like to start by saying that the SLI results were very good and Nvidia have obviously sort the SLI scaling problems out and that bodes well for the remaining 9000 series.
The ATI vs Nvidia comparisons were very biased against ATI.
It has been consistently shown that the latest ATI cards are better at higher resolutions and do not like AA. Its almost like these test were deliberately done to trip up the ATI cards. The only time they dont use AA is at lower resolutions where the ATI cards dont perform well anyway.
At higher resolutions where the ATI cards would be expected to shine the testers scupper their performance by invariably using AA.
February 26th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Hahah - I hope the nV marketing guys paid you well for this one.
Really, what a joke - the bias against AMD in this review is just one step too far, but hey… guess getting paid off is always worth it
February 26th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
haven’t anyone noticed that there are only two games tested, and both are “NVIDIA The way it’s meant to be played”….???? No wonder ATI Failed to keep up…aside from that ATI cards don’t like AA, this is not a fair comparison….
February 26th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I’m not saying that the 3870X2 is better card right now, but if you tested it in a bigger spectar of games do you think that the results would be the same…no, not really….
And considering this two games you practicly said “If you have a 3870X2 break it in half and throw it out the window, and buy two 9600GT’s”, which would be terribly stupid…
February 26th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I’m not saying that the 3870X2 is a lot better card right now, but if you tested it in a bigger spectar of games do you think that the results would be the same…no, not really….
And considering this two games you practicly said “If you have a 3870X2 break it in half and throw it out the window, and buy two 9600GT’s”, which would be terribly stupid…
February 26th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Also see this. http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3232&p=3
Crossfire is better at some games while SLI is better at others. But nevertheless EXPREVIEW picking JUST TWO blockbuster games and then switching on the AA for Call4 and then Switching it off for Bioshock DOES REALLY SEEM LIKE COOKING THE RESULTS.And why the hell DX9 bioshock was left out? Maybe because ATI driver need a little more work for DX10?
Ok we know that nvidia is better with AA at this generation due to the increased ROPS. Hopefully ATI will fix this for the R700. But who on earth really needs AA at super high resolutions like 1680*1050 and 1920*1200?
Awful review. Redo it with more games. Add HL2 episode 2 and UT3 which scale well with multi gpu and COD4 without AA at high resolution then come talk.
February 26th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Bioshock use UE3 engine, and Unreal didn’t want to make AA native support.
BTW: full 9600GT SLI VS HD3870X2 review coming soon…..
February 26th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Where are the Company Of Heroes benchmarks?
Arstechnica used it, and Ars showed the ATI cards trumped nVidia, also with AA in that game.
There is too much nVidia bias in this review and in too many reviews.
It is a fact that nVidia is afraid of ATI and because of that are playing the journalists by hiding there own weaknesses and spitting poison on the competition.
nVidia can’t stand and face competition, they are utterly weak, and so are the nVidia fanboy fools!
And it is pathetic that nVidia has so less features…where is the upgradeability nVidia? ATI has CrossfireX almost with us with which we can shuffle HD3850’s and ..70’s together, and I bet you can throw in RV7xx in the mix too.
February 27th, 2008 at 12:25 am
What a lame and totally biased review. I’m very disappointed of you.
Hope you got at least paid enough by Nvidia for choosing only two “The way it’s meant to be played” games.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:57 am
[...] Via Expreview [...]
February 27th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
[...] dominance of the graphics card market continues with the release of the new 9600 GT. The guys at Expreview.com found that two 9600’s in SLI beat AMD’s flagship 3870X2 in almost all benchmarks, a [...]
February 28th, 2008 at 1:39 am
Steam survey shows most people use 1024×768 and 1280×960, those really need AA. Same survey shows only 9% have working DX10 (vista+dx10 card). Complaining about DX10.1 is like complaining about DX192012. The 9600GT is ok, with ATI’s aggresive pricing it’s pretty close to being on par with ATI’s offerings. Which to me, isn’t super impressive, I’d rather see cards leapfrogging each other rather than matching. ATI is letting Nvidia get lazy. We should already have a 150$ card that can play Crysis at 1280×1024 4AAx8AF at 30+fps.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:04 am
[...] go ATI! Lol, Nvidia seems far away from getting pwnd. They were when the 9600GT wasnt out. Two 9600GT’s perform better than an HD3870X2 (In games aparently, not in synthetic benchmarks like 3Dmark06) __________________ PANSY THE [...]
March 1st, 2008 at 6:34 pm
[...] permalink sli gains of 9600gt are really impressive offering almost 80% gain in some tests. here are a couple of reviews GeForce 9600 GT 512MB SLI review (Inno3D) SLI performance boost! GeForce 9600GT Review - Expreview.com [...]
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:26 pm
[...] Zum Review bei Expreview Teile es: Diese Icons verzweigen auf soziale Netzwerke bei denen Nutzer neue Inhalte finden und mit anderen teilen können. [...]
March 5th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
lol funny to see all those ATI fans shouting that they should test in ATI games…i think it wont make much difference cuz ati games run well on nvidia too, wich is not for the ati cards in nvidia games. and even then, how many ati games are there really lol?
March 9th, 2008 at 7:30 am
trying to future-proof as you are saying “buying dx10.1 card for when games come out” is a common mistake. I will say it is the equivalent of buying enough milk to last 2 years without a fridge. It is going to end up sour.
it seems to me that this time round, nvidia want to milk dx10.0 for all it can since it did do the exact same mistake on that one. Also, you are assuming that dx10.1 over dx10.0 is going to be a revolution, a difference so huge, you’d be blind not to notice the difference in performance/quality. Heck, they even struggled to promote that dx10.0 > 9.0c because in reality, a new platform had trouble competing with a mature one.
what TC is a baboon was talking about is actually a “logical” point of view. what’s the point of having features that no one can utilise yet? by the time they are used, your card will be due for yet another upgrade (4x AA mandatory in dx10.1), because when you enable these extended features, you will be watching a slide show. As one kickass reviewer stated “I could draw the action faster with a crayon!”
March 10th, 2008 at 3:01 am
I have two 3870’s running in crossfire… was waiting on the 8.3 drivers to get the other two. My benchmarks are usually considerably different than those of reviews. I run crysis maxed out for dx9 at 40-50 fps with no overclocking. COD4 runs over 90, so a slight performance improvement with a $200 nvidia card doesn’t matter at all to me. Directx 10.1 may not be a big thing, but what happens when it is released, and game designers are suddenly compelled to use it? I only upgrade about once a year, and it is slated to come out before my yearly upgrade. My 3870’s in crossfire walk the dog on the 3870×2, so why not test them in crossfire… or better yet, try crossfiring two 3870×2’s. after all, 2 cards is 2 cards… right? I think that nvidia has finally choked on their overly-inflated ego’s, and proceeded to Launch inferior graphics cards with the hope that their rep, and corporate advertising slime will prevail. The 3870’s I have run cool, they are quiet, and they perform flawlessly in all dimensions. Also, running a 3870×2 prior to the release of catalyst 8.3 is pointless, seeing as it only utilizes part of the card at this time. The sad part is, that even with all of the bias in this benchmark, the ati offering still steps up.
For you who said that crytek won’t be using dx10.1, just keep in mind that the programmers just released the most poorly written game of all time. A half a gig of patches, and EA is still working on it. Perhaps if you took it up with a development team that made software that actually works… (i.e. the UNREAL camp) They might be interested in using dx10.1, rather than just trying to make their crappy graphics engine work.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Please give 9600GT SLI VS 8800GT SLI results.
March 10th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
[...] nu este chiar asa mare si/sau pentru ca cu 2×9600 ai iesi mai bine la performanta conform acestui test. Dar aici depinde si de situatia practica: daca in Ro va gasi 2×9600 la pretul acelei placi [...]
March 11th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Actually EA played a big part in Crysis being released w/o it being finished ;).
DX10.1 is a way to sell cards to idiots. Anyone following its progress knows that.
Factor in DX10 sucks at best (CoJ, Lost Planet, Crysis), then factor in you need Vista.
Yea yea, you have Vista and it runs great… well not great enuff for every Vista user to get same results.
Want something to get excited about? Raytracing and Global Illumination.
Dont even start me on Windows Live….
March 11th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
quote from Jurassic: “Actually EA played a big part in Crysis being released w/o it being finished ;).”
Totally agreed
March 14th, 2008 at 11:20 am
[...] este reviewsale comparada con una HD3850 de 512MB. Saca t tus propias conclusiones __________________ [...]
March 14th, 2008 at 11:38 am
[...] este review sale comparada con una HD3850 de 512MB. Saca t tus propias conclusiones __________________ [...]
March 17th, 2008 at 2:52 am
[...] scale? i dunno….. 8800GTS 512 (G92) $240-$270 per card 9600GT Prices $150-$210 per card Link: http://en.expreview.com/2008/02/23/g…eview/?page=15 __________________ [...]
March 17th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Я хуй в пальто!
March 21st, 2008 at 4:18 am
Да в натуре херня эта 9600gt передумал я ее брать
April 1st, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Please, delete comments 42 (March 17th, 2008 at 7:38 pm) and 43 (March 21st, 2008 at 4:18 am) - they are written in Russian using obscene words.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:13 am
[...] publicado por Sabius hay alguna comparacion entre la 9600GT y la 8800GS por ahi?? Chekea este review Saludos __________________ [...]
April 18th, 2008 at 2:01 am
[...] ta overclockeada y se le hacerca mucho a una 8800GT stock y por menos dinero. A ver si ayuda este articulo Saludos __________________ [...]
April 25th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
And the final, test, 3870X2 vs 9600SLI, they left out half the games,
i hate Biased reviews,
April 25th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
to observer:
here is the full test of 9600gt sli VS 3870X2(Chinese version)
http://www.expreview.com/review/2008-03-28/1206698362d8230.html
May 5th, 2008 at 8:34 am
[...] a google…. algunos otros enlaces: Juegos v/s Vgas SIN CENSURAS GeForce 9600 GT SLI Performance SLI performance boost! GeForce 9600GT Review - Expreview.com (14) Legit Reviews - ATI Radeon HD 3870 CrossFire Video Card Review - The Radeon HD 3870 Video Cards [...]
May 13th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
to godfall why the hell would they test x2 3870×2 against sli 9600gt………..yes its 2cards each but the 3870×2 is a dual gpu card so that’d be like testing four 3870’s against 2 9600gt’s
May 18th, 2008 at 12:47 am
i think two 9600 gt in sli mode should render more graphics than radeon 3870 x2
May 18th, 2008 at 12:52 am
9800 gx2 is a mindfreak graphic card.it renders 130 fps in SLI or more at high settings in CRYSIS
June 14th, 2008 at 12:34 am
You noobs just get over it nvidia always have been the best and will be the best. Wahts the point of getting a ati car when it cant even handle AA at a little higher resoulution and i dont think this review was baaist to ati at all ati just sucks.
June 14th, 2008 at 12:38 am
2 9600gt in sli mode will kill 2 3870. and who cares abou dx 10.1 if it has to be used some day just get new drivers a patch or somthing like that
June 14th, 2008 at 12:41 am
You just cant beat a nvidia card they are just to good the only good thing about a ati card is the price. but rember money is value the more you pay the chances are so great that you will get an awsome card or product
June 14th, 2008 at 12:42 am
speak english peaple
June 15th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Nvidia is owange Says:
June 14th, 2008 at 12:42 am
“speak english peaple”…………………. oh and spell in english people
well time to buy 2 9600 gt
June 17th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Nerds…going to buy 9800gtx for 214 brandnew
June 18th, 2008 at 6:27 am
what is the test setup? you never say what motherboard you are using. it could very well be, that the motherboard that you have to get is so much more expensive than a P35 board, that you could probably just buy 1 more expensive and powerful gfx card and end up with better results.
June 18th, 2008 at 11:23 am
page 9, P5N-T
July 9th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Ati HD4xxx pawn nvidia 8800/9800gtx series in price vs performance…thats all
July 9th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
of course… 9600GT is an outdated product
July 16th, 2008 at 2:33 am
[...] Zum Review bei Expreview [...]
August 5th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
your ati asshole is bigger than my nvidia cock
August 12th, 2008 at 8:58 am
@50
seriously man are you stupid?.. he tested a single slot 3870×2… hence why it didnt mention anything about ‘crossfire’… DUH… murder yourself immediately for being so stupid
September 15th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Im not a fanboi the simple fact is that Nvidia cards scale better than ATI
1. Most games WILL run better on nvidia cards - this review isnt biased.
2. I’ve had two ati 3870×2’s in crossfire X There is no point. nothing supports it.
3. Why buy a computer part to keep you future proof that isnt very smart as the I.T. Industry is very unstable when it comes to future proofing things as it is always constantly changing. May aswell buy what you want NOW and can use to its full potential now then upgrade when you want.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
boa vo fazer sli no meu pc xD…
November 26th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Well since i am living in australia i am thinking of getting a Asus 3850 512mb… reasons are that it costs 100 bucks…whereas 9600gt worths 150 bucks… being a student….and by reading this review… ill go for the Ati… cuz the difference isnt that big.. thnx for the review it really helped
Regards DK
November 27th, 2008 at 8:17 am
SHIT review. Obvioulsy the 9600GT was equal to HD3850 and weaker over HD3870.
9600GT SLI VS HD3870X2 was chosen only on NVIDIA favored vga.
Retard reviewer - NVIDIA fan boy..