I am looking forward to this, "Next week we'll have a follow-up looking at how the 9600 GT stacks up to the 512MB Radeon HD 3850 and the almighty 8800 GT 512."
Final sentence in review reads:
"Next week we'll have a follow-up looking at how the 9600 GT stacks up to the 512MB Radeon HD 3850 and the almighty 8800 GT 512."
Been checking daily, and now we're heading into the middle of the week AFTER next week, so where's the follow-up already? :-|
quote: The 9600 GT makes the most sense at the $169 - $179 price range, and at those price points you're going to be dealing with stock clock speeds.
The eVGA 675MHZ clock and MSI 700MHZ clocked part are both available from New Egg for 179.99. Obviously neither are clocked to 740 but the MSI part is closer to the SSC then stock and sits at the 'regular' MSRP.
wonder why Anandtech didn't test both cards with overclocking in mind, I think it will be very intersting, and even the OC results for 9600GT was only compared in persentage to it self, I hope to see more detailed comparition for these two babies
sounds to me like the smart money's on waiting for the 9800 series to come out and leaving this neutered dog for the OEM's to put into their systems and brag about.
This is sorta off topic but it looks like a good place to get reliable info. I've got an old Dell 8400. It's got the 3.4 gig chip with raid on. Will my computer even run one of the cards being discussed. I can't afford a new computer but I need more speed. UT3 demo stutters at the lowest display settings. Any advice?
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!
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.
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 :D
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.
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.
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... )
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.
Cashflow is not at all helpful if profits are negligible. That's a lot like being on a treadmill; lots of movement but getting nowhere.
AMD's creditors are looking for neet profits to pay off their loans. From any production gross profits, AMD has first to recover the silicon DEVELOPMENT charges - probably at least $10million per silicon turn including chip test SETUP costs. And that is assuming that the silicon turn is just a minor variant on a current architecture - say fewer data-paths.
Since the AMD partners had to chop the RRP of the 3850/3870 by $50 -$70 then AMD probably had to absorb at least $40 average in a reduction of the price they charge their partners for the GPUs. I doubt if that leaves them any money at all above the GPU production costs to pay off their development overhead. Maybe Anand and crew can do a breakdown of the costs on a typical 3850/3870 board? I think that you will find that for the board partners to make any profit at all at the current retail prices, AMD cannot now be charging more than $50 - $60 per GPU. I suspect that packaging and final test for a GPU is in the $20 -$30 range, which leaves precious little money to pay for each yielded die, the necessary probe-test and all other handling overhead, and help pay off the interest and capital on their loans --let alone pay off the development expenditures. nVidia can afford thin margins for a long period of time; AMD in their current financial condition sure cannot.
Anyway, nVidia's next-gen GPUs are well into design, no doubt will make their appearance well before the end of this year, and until then I fully expect them to keep up the price pressure on AMD. And no doubt Intel will do the same once the full range of Penryn processors is available.
I'm not so sure AMD's losing money on their 3xxx series silicon with these price cuts. The underlying technology is still same as as the 2xxx series, with die-shrink and optimization as main R&D spent for the 3xxx series. Also, as long as their GPU is selling, they have the cashflow to continue their business. Sure, crushing debt is bad, but if you maintain the cash flow, it's still a viable business.
The EVGA SSC is bad for the price/performance, especially considering that at you can get the MSI OCed 8800GT for mere $210 shipped at Newegg.
I'm looking forward to the comparison of the mid-range cards with an 8800GT. I still stuck deciding between an 8800GT and an 8800GTS that comes with Crysis. I guess I should hit the forums with this one.
I am not sure how long you have been around here, but... Anand the guy the website is named after did a "month with a Mac" article quite a while ago, and has been using it since.
I've seen several OLD benchmarks. Heck, I've used FRAPS plenty of times... I suppose there are problems with latency, connection, etc - but it'd be nice to get ballparks between brands.
I've always found it strange that nobody seems to include MMORPG's in the game performance review sections - WOW, EQII - these are games that draw high upgrade ratio's, and when I did play, I was always desperately looking for larger review bases that included them - especially EQII.
Probably doesn't matter much because it's an old game, but sheesh - hundreds of thousands, or in WOW's case, millions play, and a tonne are always upgrading - would seem worthwhile to me.
More directly related to the article: It's a tough call for me between this new 9600 or waiting to see what AMD has up it's sleeve... either way, looks like I'll be holding off just a little bit longer for an upgrade. I would say though, this seems to be a great time for midrange!
I agree. I play EQII about 95% of my gaming time. I am using an OC MSI 3870 now @ 1920x1200, but like any geek (err computer enthusiast) I always want to see more framerates/ete candy/etc. Would love to see an eq2 comparison.
EQ2's engine was created when CPUs were projected to reach 10Ghz by now. It uses the CPU for stuff that should definitely be done on the GPU. Having a faster CPU will get you much more of a performance increase than upgrading beyond a Geforce 7x series.
my 8800 gtx is faster then 2x 7800 gtx cards in SLI so 1 7800 ant goign to be an show stopper the 9600 gt is just under 8800 GT speeds (but do rember that 9600 gt 64, as the 8800 gt has 112? so when the 9800 type of cards come out thay should be 2x as fast as Nvidia stated then an 8800)
A 7800GT is hardly a museum piece... my SLI'd VooDoo 2's on the other hand may be there soon :)
To actually answer his question, a stock Radeon 3870 is roughly 80-85% faster than a 7800GT overall. So you'd be looking at a sizeable performance increase and DX 10 compatibility to boot.
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44 Comments
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qquizz - Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - link
I am looking forward to this, "Next week we'll have a follow-up looking at how the 9600 GT stacks up to the 512MB Radeon HD 3850 and the almighty 8800 GT 512."Cenarius - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
Final sentence in review reads:"Next week we'll have a follow-up looking at how the 9600 GT stacks up to the 512MB Radeon HD 3850 and the almighty 8800 GT 512."
Been checking daily, and now we're heading into the middle of the week AFTER next week, so where's the follow-up already? :-|
ufoall - Monday, March 3, 2008 - link
may i know what will be the price after 2 months...BenSkywalker - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
A quick comment-The eVGA 675MHZ clock and MSI 700MHZ clocked part are both available from New Egg for 179.99. Obviously neither are clocked to 740 but the MSI part is closer to the SSC then stock and sits at the 'regular' MSRP.
Samus - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
Hard to believe you can have a card that play's Crysis this well for < $200.Crysis 1600x1200 at 40+FPS
Xajel - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
wonder why Anandtech didn't test both cards with overclocking in mind, I think it will be very intersting, and even the OC results for 9600GT was only compared in persentage to it self, I hope to see more detailed comparition for these two babiesdingetje - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
i agree, and i'm most interested in oc'ing results of the cards with non stock cooling and the faster memory installed (0.8 or 1 ns memory)araczynski - Sunday, February 24, 2008 - link
sounds to me like the smart money's on waiting for the 9800 series to come out and leaving this neutered dog for the OEM's to put into their systems and brag about.strafejumper - Sunday, February 24, 2008 - link
would like to see this new card compared to a 8800 GT 512MB in price, performance, and price/performancesolitude1951 - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
This is sorta off topic but it looks like a good place to get reliable info. I've got an old Dell 8400. It's got the 3.4 gig chip with raid on. Will my computer even run one of the cards being discussed. I can't afford a new computer but I need more speed. UT3 demo stutters at the lowest display settings. Any advice?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.
kilkennycat - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
Cashflow is not at all helpful if profits are negligible. That's a lot like being on a treadmill; lots of movement but getting nowhere.AMD's creditors are looking for neet profits to pay off their loans. From any production gross profits, AMD has first to recover the silicon DEVELOPMENT charges - probably at least $10million per silicon turn including chip test SETUP costs. And that is assuming that the silicon turn is just a minor variant on a current architecture - say fewer data-paths.
Since the AMD partners had to chop the RRP of the 3850/3870 by $50 -$70 then AMD probably had to absorb at least $40 average in a reduction of the price they charge their partners for the GPUs. I doubt if that leaves them any money at all above the GPU production costs to pay off their development overhead. Maybe Anand and crew can do a breakdown of the costs on a typical 3850/3870 board? I think that you will find that for the board partners to make any profit at all at the current retail prices, AMD cannot now be charging more than $50 - $60 per GPU. I suspect that packaging and final test for a GPU is in the $20 -$30 range, which leaves precious little money to pay for each yielded die, the necessary probe-test and all other handling overhead, and help pay off the interest and capital on their loans --let alone pay off the development expenditures. nVidia can afford thin margins for a long period of time; AMD in their current financial condition sure cannot.
Anyway, nVidia's next-gen GPUs are well into design, no doubt will make their appearance well before the end of this year, and until then I fully expect them to keep up the price pressure on AMD. And no doubt Intel will do the same once the full range of Penryn processors is available.
Zoomer - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
Don't forget that the higher end 3870 is using the same part, so economics of scale will play a part in reducing costs too.ATi hardware engineers rock.
razor2025 - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I'm not so sure AMD's losing money on their 3xxx series silicon with these price cuts. The underlying technology is still same as as the 2xxx series, with die-shrink and optimization as main R&D spent for the 3xxx series. Also, as long as their GPU is selling, they have the cashflow to continue their business. Sure, crushing debt is bad, but if you maintain the cash flow, it's still a viable business.The EVGA SSC is bad for the price/performance, especially considering that at you can get the MSI OCed 8800GT for mere $210 shipped at Newegg.
conorvansmack - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I'm looking forward to the comparison of the mid-range cards with an 8800GT. I still stuck deciding between an 8800GT and an 8800GTS that comes with Crysis. I guess I should hit the forums with this one.semo - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
"Our testbed remained identical to what we used in our launch article"are you using 2 9775s or just one. it wouldn't make any difference in games either way, would it?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
That'd be 2 x 9775s, I've updated the test table. And no, they don't really make a difference in the games we're testing here today.Boushh - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
'Neither card has a passively cooled reference design'Guru3D has reviewed a passivly cooled 9600GT from ECS with an Actic Cooler on it.
dcalfine - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
That chart was made in Keynote or NumbersYou guys are all Mac users
(not that that's a bad thing)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Close :)Microsoft Office 2008, on the Mac obviously.
SilthDraeth - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I am not sure how long you have been around here, but... Anand the guy the website is named after did a "month with a Mac" article quite a while ago, and has been using it since.madgonad - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Is it even possible to benchmark an MMO due to the required server interaction?Sinerider - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I've seen several OLD benchmarks. Heck, I've used FRAPS plenty of times... I suppose there are problems with latency, connection, etc - but it'd be nice to get ballparks between brands.leexgx - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
mmo norm need more cpu then any thing els and an ok video cardSinerider - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I've always found it strange that nobody seems to include MMORPG's in the game performance review sections - WOW, EQII - these are games that draw high upgrade ratio's, and when I did play, I was always desperately looking for larger review bases that included them - especially EQII.Probably doesn't matter much because it's an old game, but sheesh - hundreds of thousands, or in WOW's case, millions play, and a tonne are always upgrading - would seem worthwhile to me.
More directly related to the article: It's a tough call for me between this new 9600 or waiting to see what AMD has up it's sleeve... either way, looks like I'll be holding off just a little bit longer for an upgrade. I would say though, this seems to be a great time for midrange!
-Sinerider
wht1986 - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
I agree. I play EQII about 95% of my gaming time. I am using an OC MSI 3870 now @ 1920x1200, but like any geek (err computer enthusiast) I always want to see more framerates/ete candy/etc. Would love to see an eq2 comparison.DigitalFreak - Sunday, February 24, 2008 - link
EQ2's engine was created when CPUs were projected to reach 10Ghz by now. It uses the CPU for stuff that should definitely be done on the GPU. Having a faster CPU will get you much more of a performance increase than upgrading beyond a Geforce 7x series.KnightProdigy - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
MMOs are not included as network speed and server lag come into play and do not accurately depict HW perfomance numbers.LostPassword - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
clubit has better prices for 9600gt, but shipping is slow for meStupidMonkey - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
how would this compare to a 7800GT?leexgx - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
my 8800 gtx is faster then 2x 7800 gtx cards in SLI so 1 7800 ant goign to be an show stopper the 9600 gt is just under 8800 GT speeds (but do rember that 9600 gt 64, as the 8800 gt has 112? so when the 9800 type of cards come out thay should be 2x as fast as Nvidia stated then an 8800)Pirks - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Robbed some museum lately?phaxmohdem - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
A 7800GT is hardly a museum piece... my SLI'd VooDoo 2's on the other hand may be there soon :)To actually answer his question, a stock Radeon 3870 is roughly 80-85% faster than a 7800GT overall. So you'd be looking at a sizeable performance increase and DX 10 compatibility to boot.
yacoub - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
"A 7800GT is hardly a museum piece."Only if the only games you buy are from the bargain bin.
StupidMonkey - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
LOL. Yeah Its been 2 years, I thought I was overdue. Thanks for the responses though. I did not expect such a major increase in performance!