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
|
|
Crysis
|
76.5 (Medium setting)
|
21.7 (Very High)
|
|
Elder Scroll IV
|
70.4 (No AA/AF)
|
45.4 (4xAA/16xAF)
|
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ET: Quake Wars
|
119.7 (No AA)
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109.1 (No stated)
|
|
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
|
72.8 (No AA)
|
51 (No stated)
|
|
P.Comsumption (Idle)
|
268 W
|
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!)
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!
NVIDIA has released the latest driver for the graphics chipsets.
The latest Forceware 162.18 is for Windows XP and Forceware 162.22 is for Windows Vista (32bit). (Vista 64 bit)
The latest driver improves the compatibility for Lost Planet and has numerous fixes and compatibility fixes for games and application.
I have tested out the driver with my rather old system and there isn’t a significant improvement in 3DMark05 in the GeForce 7600GS.
My rig spec is as follows:
AMD64 Althon 64 3000+ @ 1.9 Ghz, 2GB DDR RAM, GeForce 7600GS.
Below is the 3DMark05 result (run at 1024×768, no AA/AF)
The improvement is a mere 34 points. But that’s only for my rig, the new drivers released these days improve the latest series of graphics card more than the older series.
Test out the new driver and leave your result here.
nVidia has released the ForceWare 100.54 for Windows Vista.
It is a beta driver for GeForce 8800 GPUs, it does supports GeForce 6/7 series.
Download the 32-bit driver.
Download the 64-bit driver.
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