Nvidia 9600GT is the best! I love you 9600GT, give me babies!
By HoboGamer • Apr 1st, 2008 • Category: Lead Story
Found this “review” at TechArp.com , maybe this review title should be called “A Love Poem to my Dear 9600GT”, me thinks the author could have a 9600GT fetish.
It really gets under my skin when reviewers skew a product in a better light by omitting small details here and there. Don’t get me wrong here, i agree the 9600GT is a great budget card, but this reviewer can really talk up a product by glossing over weaker points and emphasizing stronger ones, here are some examples:
Company of Heroes page
Even at 1600 x 1200, it was slightly (3%) slower than the GeForce 8800 GT running at 1920 x 1200.
Ok fair enough, maybe he’s trying to show that the 9600GT can still keep up… at lower resolutions. Well thank you Mr Obvious. What he glosses over is the direct comparison between resolutions, where the 8800GT has around 25% - 33% advantage over the 9600GT, and the 8800GTS 512 has from 30% - 45% advantage.
Scroll down to the DX10 Company of Heroes section, where he states:
At 1280 x 1024, the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT was slightly faster than the GeForce 8800 GT running at 1600 x 1200.
OH MY GOD, stop bloody comparing apples to oranges, by his logic thats like some drunken bum off the street bragging about beating Mike Tyson in a fight as long as Tyson is blindfolded, with both hands tied behind his back.
If you actually look at the figures, the 8800GT is, again, around 25% faster than the 9600GT, oh he glossed over that little tidbit of info as well, whoops! Did you notice how confusing the graphs are in this review? Normally you would have the resolutions grouped together so its easier to visualise how the cards compare to each other on the same resolution, but the way it’s laid out in this review, trying to figure it out is worse than calculating my Tax without an accountant or a calculator.
The thing is the 9600GT is definately not a bad card, it’s good and can tag behind the 8800GT and GTS, but this is at lower fidelity, i.e 1280×1024 and lower , 0xAF , 0xAA, but the 8800GT and GTS pull away as the resolutions get higher. Here’s my take on it, if you are on an ultra budget and your name is “Scrooge”, get a 9600GT if your native resolution is 1280×1024 or less, on the other hand if you run 1440×900 or higher and you want some AA and AF get the 8800GT. Otherwise there is a minimal price difference between the 9600GT and 8800GT, check here, you can find a 8800GT at ~$190, whereas 9600GT’s range from $160-$180.
The price difference is minimal, yet at higher quality/resolutions you’ll be getting anywhere from 20-35% faster performance from the 8800GT.
I think i’ll leave it at that, i’m sure you’ll find more examples of what i’m talking about if you check out the rest of the article, i would find and type up more examples to rant about, of which there are plenty, but then my head would implode.
End Rant
HoboGamer is a devout PC Gamer, who loves his budget hardware and getting the most bang for his buck, i.e cheap-skate.
Email this author | All posts by HoboGamer
I agree with you,
thanks for stating the facts as they should be.
I disagree. Being a budget minded gamer, I don’t give a whit how the 9600GT compares at some astronomical resolution. I like to know that if I use a lower resolution I’ll get similar performance to a better card at higher resolution. Maybe you’re not the intended demographic of this type of review?
The main thing i wanted to hit on is that for a little extra a 8800GT is more futureproof than the 9600GT,but this is changing rapidly.
The price difference is starting to widen, 9600GTs are getting under the $150~ mark, before the prices of both cards were fairly close which meant it was hard to pick.
I was happy running 1280×1024 resolutions in my games.. 2 years ago, nowadays i have a 19″ widescreen and i need to run my games at my native resolution, 1440×900 which means the 9600GT isn’t the best card for me, but hey if you plan on running low resolutions for a while, with the 9600GT prices where they are now, then it’s a good option.
hey hob
i don’t where to post this request, but can you add a reminder like in GT where it has this blue little head on the topic to remind the viewer to know they had write a post on that particular subject? =]
so i don’t have to click on every topic to read my old post to check if anyone reply to me or write up a good post. : D
Is the TechArp reviewer on Nvidia’s payroll or something?
It should be pretty obvious to anyone familiar with Nvidia that the 9600gt would be inferior to the 8800gt. Cards with labels ending in 600 (eg:8600gts, 9600gt) are mid range products, designed to give decent performance under LOW resolutions with little to no anti aliasing. Cards with labels ending in 800 eg (8800gt, 9800gx2) are top range cards.
Comparing graphics cards using different resolutions for each is just misleading.
yeah that would be cool, ill check it out
or an email reminder works too : D
Yeah, my friend is lookin into a new card for his upgrade, he was looking at the 8800 gts 320mb, i told him might as well get the 640mb for the extra ram and benefit from it in the longer run.
how come all these card reviews and comments are so out of date?
Nobody seems to realise that the 9600 gt can now be had with 1024 megs /
All I have seen are reviews for older cards on the web that go back over two years.
Even most of the sites dedicated to gaming card reviews don’t look like they have done an up to date review for years!!!
gainswood 9600gt 1024 meg golden sample has been out for yonks and I would dare anybody to find a review on the net written in English.