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Leadtek 9600 GT SLI reviewed and compared with 9800 GTX

Videocards/VGA Reviews by geoffrey @ 2008-04-20

With the Geforce 9600 GT pricing reaching new lows, it becomes interesting to see if pairing up two of them can get you more bang for the buck compared to the more expensive Geforce 9800 GTX. In this review we use two Leadtek 9600 GT Extreme cards and run our battery of game tests to find out what performance you can expect.

Test setup & Benchmark methodology

Test setup

Geoffreys' Test Setup



CPU	Intel E6600 @ 3,6GHz
Cooling	Zalman 9700 LED
Mainboard	ASUS P5E MSI P7N SLI Platinum
Memory	2x1Gb TEAMGROUP Xtreem 800MHz 4-4-4-10-35-4-10-10-10-2T
Graphics	Leadtek WinFast PX9600GT Extreme 512MB Gainward Bliss 9800 GTX PCX 512MB Sparkle 8800GTS 512MB Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GT ZL 512MB HIS HD3870 512MB IceQ3 Turbo Sparkle 8800GTS 320MB Galaxy 9600GT 512MB OverClocked Xtreme Tuner
Other	FSP Epsilon 900 PSU Maxtor 80Gb PATA HDD Seagate 200GB SATA HDD Antec Nine Hundred housing 20" Dell UltraSharp 2007FP TFT monitor

The Intel E6600 was being overclocked to 3,6GHz by changing the FSB from 266MHz to 400MHz and by keeping the multiplier at default (9). This way the CPU would score more or less on par with the highest clocked Wolfdale CPU's.

Teamgroup's pair of 1Gb DDR2 sticks were clocked to default settings via the Intel X38 chipset.

ForceWare 169.21 drivers for GeForce 8800GTS 320MB video card

ForceWare 174.12 drivers for GeForce 8800GT and GeForce 9600GT video cards

ForceWare 174.40 drivers for GeForce 9800GTX video card

Catalyst 8.2

While Windows Vista is now officially launched, we decided to test with a mature Windows OS (XP SP2).

Benchmark methodology

The game benchmarks were completed with the Leadtek PX9600GT 512MB, Gainward 9800GTX, Sparkle GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB and Sparkle 8800GTS 512MB at stock speeds, while we clocked the HIS HD3870 512MB IceQ3 Turbo, Galaxy 9600GT 512MB OverClocked Xtreme Tuner and the Leadtek PX8800GT ZL 512MB down to NVIDIA's reference levels.

We tested the Leadtek 9600GT cards on both NVIDIA and Intel chipsets and it seemed that on the Intel X38 board the video cards come out just a tad faster. To make sure we were comparing the cards at the same performance level made sure that ALL 9600GT tests were done on the same platform, and since the MSI K7N SLI Platinum is the only board we have around supporting SLI it is no wonder why that become our preferred board for benchmarking. Non the less did we add the results we obtained with other NON-9600GT video cards.

All tests were done with a 20” LCD monitor with a maximum resolution of 1600*1200, where 4xAA and 16xAF offered the best in-game graphics we found that AA disabled didn't decrease the eye-candy that much while the frame rate now actually become more acceptable. The in-game settings were always maxed out, we also made sure we were using the full games with the latest patches applied in order get the best up-to-date performance and graphics.

With our following performance charts you will be informed at all time at what IQ settings were being used. FRAPS was used to measure the FPS during repeated manual run-troughs of a certain part of the games tested, the minimum, maximum and average values were recorded.

Colin McRae DIRT

Crysis

The Elder Scrolls Oblivion

Rainbow Six: Vegas

Bioshock

Futuremark 3DMark Series

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