It’s World Cyber Games again. The Asian Championship is once again, held in Singapore.
Last year, I did a coverage on the gaming rig that was used there. This year, I am going to do it again.
As usual, the organiser is going to sell the gaming rigs after the competition at a bargain price.
The rig specification is as follows:
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83 Ghz, 1333 Mhz FSB, 12MB L2 Cache
- MSI P45 Neo2-FR
- Aeneon X-Tune 2GB DDR2-1066 CL5 RAM
- Seagate SATA-II 250GB HDD
- XpertVision GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB GDDR3 PCI-E x16 Graphics Card
- Samsung 20x DVD Rewriter
- CoolerMaster Centurion 534 Casing
- CoolerMaster Extreme Power 460W
- Logitech/Microsoft Keyboard and Mouse
- Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1
- Samsung T220 22″ LCD 2ms response time / DVI interface
- 1 year warranty
Price? SG$ 1,688. This is a pretty good price if you want to buy a new computer right now.
The downside of the deal is that 2GB of RAM seems too little for Windows Vista. The Windows Vista should be 32-bit as it is not stated. Graphics wise, 9600 GT is good enough, but HD4850 will be better. The PSU is also not powerful enough. At least a 500W will be fine.
You can make your interest known to the organiser here.
I have covered the price-performance of 9600 GT SLi vs 9800 GTX. Now, it’s time to compare 9600 GT with Radeon 3870.
This time, the review was done at TechSpot, and clearly, from the review, 9600 GT is a more value for money card than the Radeon 3870. I will quote some performance indicators.
From the graph, you can see that the performance of 9600 GT is almost similar to 3870. Even with SLi and Crossfire, the disparity between the 2 combinations are not much to be noticeable.
Hence, 9600 GT edges in this comparison because of its price. At USD 130, it definitely beat 3870, which is price at around USD 280. For less than half the price, you can similar performance. The winner is obvious.
I have decided to shift some attention to the hardware now as we wait for our favourite games to be release.
Today, I will discuss on 9600 GT SLi and 9800 GTX graphics card.
Currently, the graphics card war seems to be falling on the side of NVIDIA. Many gamers have been opting for the NVIDIA options due to the performance from the high-end model and value of money series, such as 8800 GT and 9600 GT.
Based on Anandtech 9600 GT and 9800 GTX reviews, here is the comparison of results of various benchmarking tools.
Using the same test bed configuration,
|
9600GT SLi
|
9800 GTX
|
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Crysis
|
76.5 (Medium setting)
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21.7 (Very High)
|
|
Elder Scroll IV
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70.4 (No AA/AF)
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45.4 (4xAA/16xAF)
|
|
ET: Quake Wars
|
119.7 (No AA)
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109.1 (No stated)
|
|
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
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72.8 (No AA)
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51 (No stated)
|
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P.Comsumption (Idle)
|
268 W
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240 W
|
|
P.Comsumption (Load)
|
396 W
|
350 W
|
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Price
|
~SGD 350 (USD 260)
|
~SGD 490 (USD 363)
|
As the setting is different, we cannot see the exact results. But you can see that from ET and S.T.A.L.K.E.R, 9600 GT SLi has the edge. Moreover, there is a SGD 100 gap between the 2 configurations.
Overall, the 9600 GT combination is a more value for money combination. But you will need a SLi board for the configuration and if you care about the 40 W difference in power consumption so much, go for 9800 GTX (Save the Earth!)
The first dual-core AMD/ATi graphics card has arrived on shore. Gamers have been looking forward to this new graphics card as it is 2 HD3870 combined onto one PCB, Crossfiring on 1 graphic card. This is the first dual core graphics card since the NVIDIA GeForce 7950×2 in 2006.
HD3870×2 is made up of 2 RV670 graphics chip used in HD3850 and HD3870 graphics card.
There are several reviews going around the net regarding this highly anticipated graphic card.
For the reviews, I gathered that this new graphics card need a new driver to enhance its performance as well as providing CrossFireX support to Crossfire 2 or more HD3870×2 for godly performance. Currently, HD3870×2 is on par with CrossFire HD3870 but slightly behind NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra SLi, which is an aging graphics card, on some of the tests. We will be looking forward to the new driver release as soon as possible.
I came across this amazing piece of tweak for Crysis, solely for Windows XP gamers.
Here is one of the screenshot taken from here. Click the picture to enlarge.
The first screenshot is the DirectX 9 effect screenshot, while the second one is the DirectX 10 effect screenshot.
You can download the patch from FileFront.
Or you can just add this string of command to the end of the the game shortcut:
+r_sunshafts 1 +e_water_ocean_fft 1 +g_battleDust_enable 1 +r_WaterGodRays 1 +r_UsePOM 1
Go try it out and express your joy here!
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