All Graphics cards Feeds

Gigabyte 9600 GT

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Recently, NVIDIA has gone into manufacturing overdrive, releasing a slew of new graphics cards in a bid to bury the competition.

We've seen the excellent 8800GT arrive, quickly followed by weaker iterations of the same card at lower prices. Now we have the Gigabyte 9600GT, a relatively low-budget graphics card that makes the others in the sub-£200 market all but redundant.

NVIDIA's latest budget graphics card

The gaming performance is on a par with the G92-based 8800GT, dropping a few frames per second here and there, but never enough to really make a difference to the naked eye at standard resolutions.

Of course, if you're driving a very hi-res panel at 2,560 x 1,600 then you're going to have trouble getting smooth framerates at the native resolution, but if you're willing to pay out for such a mammoth screen then you'll be able to afford at least two of these, or the upcoming 9800GTX, to boost performance.

Tramples the competition

Compared to NVIDIA's 8800GS and the awful 8800GT 256MB version - both of which are still retailing at well above the cost of the 9600GT - this card walks all over them.

This is due in no small part to the 512MB of GDDR3 memory, but also because of the new GPU core beating at the heart of the 9600GT.

If you look hard enough you can find these cards retailing for nearer the £100 mark, making this the budget gamer's card of choice at the moment - that is, if they want to get games featuring Vista's new graphics showcase, DirectX 10, working at playable framerates.

Impressive performance

We're finally seeing performance at this price bracket that previously we were having to shell out at least double for barely three months ago. Such is the march of progress in the graphics world of late.

If you're looking at getting hold of a low-price PC gaming rig you can now pick up some real bargains shaped around the 9600GT for around £500, and if you're just looking to upgrade an existing PCI-E machine then you'll be hard pushed to find another way to boost your gaming experience this much for £100.

Asus EAH3850 OCGear

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Whatever happened to that 1950s science-fiction dream of computers as huge cabinets stacked wall-to-wall, with thousands of blinking lights and adjustable dials?

All those optimistic scientists would probably be quite depressed to see what computers have become: mostly dull-grey, metal boxes with a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Asus is obviously planning to set the record straight with the EAH3850 OCgear, which features - a knob. A lovely, shiny, round knob, and we'll stop before we go down a route that wouldn't fit this review at all.

Control your graphics

The knob itself sits on a 5.25-inch panel on the front of your PC, and connects to the internal USB headers on your motherboard.

It's quite possibly the handiest thing ever, enabling control of the graphics card's core, memory and fan speeds, as well as volume control for system sound.

We can't remember the last time we used a dial to adjust volume, but by great Zeus' beard, it feels mighty fine. No more squinting at millimetre adjustments of a little slidey thing in the taskbar, just proper, tactile volume adjustment.

The display also lights up and handily shows the current frame rate of your system, as well as the temperature of the graphics card's core. It's all together a great idea, and one that's very simple to set up and easy to use.

Importantly, it also seems to work as it was intended: during a game we pushed up the core and memory, and experienced a noticeable rise in the game's frame rates, but we were able to also drop them when errors occurred.

Disappointing performance

I have to admit that the card itself is a bit of a let down in comparison. It's a 3850, so you can't really expect hugely satisfying performance.

However, results in Crysis and Company of Heroes were solid, if unspectacular, and that overclocking knob definitely works. Asus have got a real winner on their hands with the OCgear front panel, it puts all the features you want in one easy-to-use format.

It's just a shame they haven't matched it to a decent graphics card. Once Asus release the all-encompassing notebook version though - the XGStation - we may see improved support on the OCGear.

Gigabyte 9600GT

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It's time to look at Gigabyte's entry, a bog-standard 9600GT. And while it doesn't quite match some rival cards in terms of performance, it's still a contender.

The GPU clock is only 50MHz lower than the overclocked Palit 9600GT Sonic offering, but it's the memory speed that really takes a hit - dropping from 2GHz down to 1.8GHz.

Crysis and 3DMark06 both clocked impressive results, but couldn't match other rival card's raw performance, with 3DMark06 dropping significantly, and inevitably a low frame rate in Crysis. The price tag is roughly the same on both cards, and while there's only a few quid in it, it's still bad news for Gigabyte's card.

Competitive price

However, it does have a single-slot design, and comes with a phono and S-Video outbox, making it ideal for media centre setups. Although the performance is slightly poorer than most of the competition, it still stays ahead of AMD's similarly-priced budget hero, the HD3850, and thus is a better option for real gamers.

If the price dropped under £100, the Gigabyte 9600GT would be worth considering, and still may prove useful for media centre builders. At the current pricing the overclocked Palit 9600GT Sonic beats it hands down.

PowerColor HD3850 512MB

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In theory, the only difference between this cheapo Radeon HD 3850 board and the highfalutin' HD 3870 card from Sapphire is clockspeeds.

They both share 320 stream shaders, 16 texture and render output units, 256-bit bus and 512MB of memory.

Worth the extra money?

We couldn't help hoping that the large, flower-style copper cooler PowerColor strap-on would help bridge the gap.

To an extent, it does. As standard, the GPU on this card runs around 100MHz slower. With both overclocked, that shrinks to just 50MHz. Not enough to be noticeable in-game. So, in other words, why pay more?

As for how this card compares to Asus' 8800 GS, it's a little off the pace at stock frequencies, but on par when overclocked. The extra 128MB of memory PowerColor delivers then is significant.

Asus EN8800GS 384MB

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Does the cut-down architecture of this Asus-made GeForce 8800 GS scupper its ability to compete with comparably priced Radeon HD 3850 boards?

For starters, with 96 stream processors it's down to 16 compared to an 8800GT. It also sacrifices eight texture samplers and four render output units, now totalling 48 and 12 respectively.

Slimmed down features

The 192-bit memory bus also represents a climb down from the 256-bit item found on many of its rivals.

In practice, it's a price that's just about worth paying, given that it's allowed Asus to squeeze in a tolerable 384MB of memory.

It clearly has the measure of its key competitor, the 512MB PowerColor Radeon HD 3850.

Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Atomic 512MB

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Three hundred and twenty stream processors. Sounds impressive, eh?

Surely, NVIDIA's GeForce 8800GT chipset and its pathetic tally of 112 stream processor can't possibly compete?

Actually it can. But that's mostly because GPU specs are as much spin as they are solemn sermon.

Effective cooling

In truth, the HD 3800 family is 64 extremely powerful five-way shader units. But then 64 doesn't sound as sexy as 320. So, 320 it is.

Marketing spiel aside, Sapphire's new Atomic cooling solution certainly delivers. This is the fastest stock-clocked HD 3870 in town, but it still has a little left for overclockers.

That's quite an achievement given that this slim single-slot 3870 is up against the dual-slot cooler of the AMD reference design.

Asus EN8800GT 512MB

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If there's something to be said for keeping things simple and concentrating on the basics, then this Asus EN8800GT 512MB board makes its case loud and clear.

It sticks entirely with NVIDIA's reference design for GeForce 8800GT cards. The result is a total domination of our performance tests. Natch.

The best of the affordable cards

Of course, being based on a relatively highly specified chipset to begin with helps. But this card confirms the NVIDIA G92 GPU's status as the finest of the sensible money graphics chips.

Even the factory-overclocked Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Atomic can't compete, despite boasting much faster memory and core clockspeeds.

Add in the EN8800GT's overclocking prowess that brings it closer than any other card to handling Crysis in all its glory. There's no contest at this price point.

Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 1GB

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From the sub-prime to the ridiculous.

That was our instinctive feeling when we realised that Asus' 256MB 8800 GT board was priced to compete with a 1GB card, the HD 3850.

Impressive memory

But as conventional thinking on graphics memory is outdated, we must recalibrate our attitudes towards affordable boards with mega memory counts for this AMD-powered Sapphire card.

Tons of memory isn't a marketing ruse anymore, the latest PC games are data-intensive. If you don't have enough memory, you'll dip into system RAM and that's a recipe for tragic 3D performance.

But not here. Despite the low price Sapphire has managed to fit decent GDDR3 chips with plenty of overclocking headroom.

Asus EN8800GT 256MB

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What a difference 256MB of video memory makes.

A year or so ago, we would have confidently recommended that 256MB of memory was plenty for monitors that max out below 1,920x1,200. Today, that logic has been lobbed out of the window.

Not enough memory

Despite identical clockspeeds and GPU specifications, this 256MB board is comprehensively hosed by its 512MB 8800GT-based bretheren.

Granted, the difference in most games isn't huge, unless you ramp up the resolution to 1,920x1,200. But that won't be the case for much longer, as the numbers from Crysis prove.

This card can't cope with all that graphics data (mainly textures, but also models). That's a shame, because there's no question about the GPU's raw power.

Sapphire X1950GT

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Sometimes benchmark results don't do justice to a card's real potential. For example the X1800GTO is only slightly ahead of MSI's GeForce 7600GT-based card in tests.

Do not, however, be fooled. In both F.E.A.R. and Oblivion, two of the most notorious processor-wilting games around, it has the measure of the 7600GT - no mean feat when you consider how much Sapphire is asking for its silicon and copper.

And the reason is simple. This is a cut down high-end board with a 256-bit memory bus rather than a trumped-up budget offering labouring behind a 128-bit bus. It's based on ATI's R520 processor, which lest you forget, was briefly the world's fastest graphics chip just over a year ago. It's really the only card in the budget group that we'd go questing around Cyrodiil within Oblivion.