• Black Screen With Active DP on HP LP2065
• FS: Planet Eclipse Etek Ego Paintball Marker
• Looking for a recommendation on two builds
• Help Me Design an Ivy Bridge Rig
• 2x GTX470SC
• CPU-Z - reporting wrong multipler and bclk?

• The Apple-II by Stephen Wozniak: How about a ...
• Hacktivists Claim Takedown of Chicago Police ...
• 19-year-old Egyptian Invents Propulsion Devic...
• Windows 8 Gives Parents a Computer-Use Report...
• U.K. Gov't Proposes New Data Surveillance Pro...
• Time Warner Cable Customers Can Access HBO GO...

BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC

The new GeForce 9600 GT is poised to deliver high performance for under $200. We take the new BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC for a spin in Crysis, COD 4, and UT3 to test its mettle. Is your hard earned cash better spent on a Radeon HD 3850, Radeon HD 3870, or GeForce 8800 GT.

Crysis

(DirectX 10)

We are using the full version copy of Crysis. Crysis is a first person shooter that is set in 2019. What makes Crysis unique is the amazing destructible environment and the on the fly customizability of your character and your weapons. Then there is always the graphics quality that will bring even the top end video cards to their knees. We will be playing Crysis in the default APIs for our system, which launches automatically in DX10 mode with the 64-bit executable. We have applied the latest Patch version 1.1 for Crysis which improves single video card and multi-GPU (SLI and CrossFire) performance.

As you progress through Crysis the game becomes more graphically demanding; first the scenic vistas, then the weather effects, and finally the final boss all lead your optimized playable settings of the first few levels to become unplayable. Our run-through in the graphs below involves 10 minutes of gameplay in “Assault_Crysis” the Harbor map. This map includes the transition from night to day, tons of explosions, particles, physics, AI interaction and water.

Note that in the graphs, we have lowered our redline to 25 FPS for Crysis. This game is demanding, and low framerates are impossible to avoid, gameplay is also different in this game to where 25 FPS and up feels very playable. (Very likely due to the efficient use of motion blur.) Note that the down-spikes to 0 FPS in the graphs are due to the saved game points.

Crysis has the distinct benefit of being a game which exposes shader performance superiority in video cards. To put it simply, faster shader performance is going to shine through in this game by allowing you to set higher in-game settings thus improving the gaming experience. To our surprise the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC not only allowed a better gaming experience than the Radeon HD 3850, but it also provided a better experience than the Radeon HD 3870.

With the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT we found that 1280x1024 was the sweet spot for this video card in Crysis. We tried pushing to 1600x1200, and that was just barely playable with all in-game settings set to “Medium.” By lowering to 1280x1024 we were able to set several in-game graphics options to “High.” Notably we were able set the texture quality to “High”, volumetric effects quality to “High” and water to “High.” All three of these options helped improve the experience by delivering improved texture quality, better light rays in the daytime, and a higher water quality.

The GeForce 8800 GT was faster than the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC by a large margin in Crysis. With the GeForce 8800 GT we could have all of those options on the GeForce 9600 GT turned on “High” plus the shaders quality set to “High.” Setting the shaders quality to “High” makes the most significant impact in the gameplay experience in Crysis. The BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC didn’t have the performance to enable this setting to “High” at 1280x1024, even with everything else on “Medium.” The GeForce 8800 GT however does allow this setting to be enabled, along with the texture, volumetric effects, and water all set to “High.”

Both the Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 were playable at the same settings of 1280x1024 with everything on “Medium.” The Radeon HD 3850 was the slowest performing video card in our lineup and even at the settings used below performance was just barely playable. The experience was definitely not as smooth as the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC. The Radeon HD 3870, with its higher clock speed and larger framebuffer, allowed a smoother experience, but we weren’t able to raise any in-game settings.

Any way you slice it, the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC allows a more enjoyable experience in Crysis compared to the Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870. The GeForce 8800 GT however, offers a better experience than the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC by a large amount, due to shader count no doubt.