X-bit labs

Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT: Worthy Rival to ATI Radeon HD 3000 (page 14)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 03/07/2008 | 10:33 AM ]

Performance in RPG

Hellgate: London

The GeForce 9600 GT has fewer ALUs and TMUs in comparison with the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, but this only shows up in its lower minimum speed. The cards provide similar average frame rates, with a minor advantage on the latter’s part at high resolutions. The ATI Radeon HD 3870 behaves in a similar way, too. None of these cards provide a comfortable speed with enabled FSAA. The Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB is the only device capable of that at the highest graphics quality settings.

Gothic 3

The current version of the game doesn’t support FSAA, so we performed the test with anisotropic filtering only.

There is almost no difference between the Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT and the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB due to the specifics of the game engine. These cards are also very close behind the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. All of them allow playing comfortably at 1920x1200 whereas the ATI Radeon HD 3870 is limited to 1600x1200. That’s quite an ordinary sight for a game developed under Nvidia’s The Way It’s Meant to Be Played program.