Its been a while since the 8800 series Nvidia graphic cards has been released. No one has topped Nvidia’s offering since. With the release of Vista, and talk of games that require more than the average budget card of last year can offer, what do you do if you are looking to build a new PC. Of coarse, the 8800 series of video cards from Nvidia  are still a completely valid option. The successor to the 8800 is just around the corner.

If you are looking for an alternative, I have what would be considered reasonable option.

EVGA-Geforce-9600-GT

Still warm from the delivery trucks is Nvidia’s most recent offer. The Geforce 9600 GT. This card would be a good choice for many and the reason is simple, you can get "almost" 8800 performance for as low as $169. Yes its been so long since the 8800 released that todays budget video card is plenty capable of being the video workhorse of your PC. The 9600 GT as you guessed is the first card released from Nvidia’s next line of cards (the 9000 series).  The EVGA Geforce 9600 GT card I priced at Newegg itself is pretty decent on features…

  • PCI Express 2.0
  • 650 mhz core clock
  • 512 mb video ram
  • SLI ready
  • HDCP compliant
  • Direct X 10 support
  • 2 DVI outs (dvi to vga adapter included). Svideo out, HDTV out (via component)

All that for $169 (actually $149 if you count Neweggs $20 rebate).

What about performance?

the Geforce 9600 GT is considered a budget card so you get budget performance. In this case, that is a good thing, the performance is nothing to sneeze at, besting some of the 8800 models in some benchmarks. see for yourself (benchmarks came from the excellent review of the 9600 GT over at Neowin.net)

Bioshock-Benchmark-9600-GT

Crysis-9600-GT-Benchmarks

UT3-9600-GT-Benchmarks